Full text of "Chicago The History Of Its Reputation"

See other formats

This book is with

tight
Binding

cket

Your Card ii TMs Pock

will I** wlv w

.ii i^

way w*

Iff fitfif
i«*»k* w; *<v

Ifrv-l^l !»» »f ""•*' f

« , .1 ii^ In* t »*«rM*«*r w>" f* Mil

t|npt^irrti^ii« di^^tHrr4

*' 4f4 l» ^f>^

, t

iin »r * *|%

t * *»
*»»i» *i*i »f

PUBLIC LIBRARY

Kauas Cit», Ut

Keep !a» Cri hlfe FocM

r *' * ^ **

CHICAGO

THE HISTORY Ofr"rPS REPUTATION

Part I hy

LLOYD LEWIS

/nf r m/Mr fiVn and Furl II %

HENRY JUSTIN SMITH

HAHCOUBT, BRACE AND COMPANY

NEWYOEK

CHICAGO

THE HISTOEY OF ITS
REPUTATION

INTRODUCTION

Lo,

before the Limited slows down for its glide into the
terminal yards, a traveler knows that Chicago lies before him.

From whichever direction he comes, he crosses level country
which, though dotted with towns, still has the horizon, the
tints, and something of the grand freedom, of the Mid-Western
steppes. Soon the windy open spaces fall behind. Into the
picture move the shapes of industrial plants, a legion of mon-
sters that stroke and hiss on the city's borders. Their chim-
neys are like clusters of reeds- Ghostly amid the vapor, or sharp
against the sky, their contorted limbs, their mystic collections
of turrets, derricks, raised trackage, have majesty and pathos
as well.

In this radius, too, are the marching towers of power lines,
an occasional gas tank, like an absurdly large cheese, the low,
windowed buildings of many a factory; and then, touching
elbows and patterned a good deal alike, villages, suburbs, in
which the city's terra cotta and old-time frame construction
are curiously mingled.

The city thickens. Innumerable streets wheel by ; the eye can
follow their long, monotonous length for miles. Every other
one seems to have a street car-line. The train thunders over
a succession of viaducts. Masses of buildings peer at it and

vanish — stores, apartments, hotels, college towers, chur
spires. From somewhere come piercing sounds, audible abo
the rumble of the train ; and an indefinable throb can be fe*
the composite pulse of millions of people. One feels a myster
in it all, a force both thrilling and terrifying. One knows thai
the hunt for dollars, women and fame is violent here, scarceh
hidden behind the sleek machinery of an efficient age.

Coming from the east, the traveler has had glimpses, of tei
between astonishing sand-mountains, of a sparkling blue lake
He now gets broader and broader views of it. If he has neve?
seen it before, the size of this lake is beyond his expectation,
Why, it is an inland ocean, no less! The farther shore cannot
be made out. This body of water has a surf, and fascinating
bands of color. White gulls circle silently over it. In wintet,
this side of the blue rollers, the beach is rimmed with ice.

And suddenly, on a curve far ahead, the traveler catcher
sight of a phantom city of towers. They float, it seems, on .%
sort of island, with their spires or sharp shoulders taking a
dove-color from the lake mists and the landward vapor*

It is only a glimpse. The train rushes through more
and over more viaducts. It arrives; the traveler alights.
now finds himself at the feet of those stunning towers*
form a row of proud, glistening titans along the boulevard y
and they face a park, vast acres of which are lawn, or highwayi
three times as wide as Napoleon ever imagined* The strange-
had best get his first impression from this lakeside park;
perhaps standing on the steps of the marble Field Museum*
He will then begin to realize what the lake means ; and, facing
that epic rampart of buildings, he will see to what a pol&t the
"skyscraper idea," Chicago's own discovery, has advanced

He will also, very likely — it has happened a good many
times — begin to revise his theories about the sort of
the city has.

He can stand on the south veranda of the Art Institute,
overlooking a little plaza where pigeons strut and flutter as
placidly as in front of St, Mark's, Venice; from here he can
see the life of a modern boulevard, rich, organized, confident;
and he can look up again at the tiers of skyscraper windows,
behind each collection of which cities-within-cities do their
work with a precision that amounts to monotony.

The trouble is, he may begin to think that he has seen it
all. That, also, has happened.

It will take a good part of a life-time to see it all. And
by the time the observer has studied one part, he may find that
another part, when he goes back to it, has changed beyond
recognition.

The city has a daemon — Innovation.

It has come to the height of a passion for tearing up, im-
proving, substituting, enlarging. It is in a frenzy of discon-
tent with everything that was big enough for the last genera-
tion ; and of course, hardly any of those things are really big
enough for this one. So, on every hand, not only "down-town"
but miles distant toward the border, there are seen wreckage,
huge holes in the earth, new steel frame-works; and, on the
lake front, great areas of unfinished park, all pushing toward
some sort of complete result.

In the meantime, a student of the city will have to hurry if
he <*Kp£ets to take home a memory of the older Chicago. In
one region, the "near north side/5 benign nineteenth century
houses are fairly tumbling before the invasion of smart, tall,
money-making buildings. On side streets, still "fashionable,"
old-time "mansions^ of granite or brick tend to resist the com*
mercial wave ; but look across their mansard roofs and you are
sure to see the threat of a new "step-back." Meantime, the
district remains wistfully beautiful, full of contrasts, Euro-
pean in Its slight shabbmess, its Bohemia, its peculiar twilights*

vii

The near part of the "south side5'— suburb only sixty years
ago— is now largely what sociologists call a depressed area.
Even the negroes are leaving its older localities; industry is re-
making these pest-holes. Farther out are isolated, peaceful
relics of a prosperous age ; a few rows of red-brick houses sug-
gesting the Back Bay of Boston, a few streets where large
dwellings, in the architectural style of a generation ago, still
stand amid broad lawns. But the inevitable thought is, how
soon will they pass?

Having ridden through this "south side," possibly down a
boulevard swarming with black people — their costumes gen-
erally touched with picturesque color — having seen miles of
aging houses and uninspired flat-building blocks, the stranger
will meet with a surprise. Away out there beyond the valley of
tarnished things, he will come upon a community of red roofs
and gray walls, with the ivy of thirty years growing upon
them— a University. Most of the buildings have a misleading
air of great age. The oldest of them is thirty-seven ! They stand
along a double boulevard, the Midway Plaisance, which yieldn
nothing to the Champs Elys£es except the exquisite slope of
the latter. And on this boulevard rises a new gray tower, almost
white, the tallest eminence outside of the "loop." It crowna a
great building of cathedral type, the University Chapel, just
come into the life of Chicago as its purest symbol of religious
feeling. Its foundations go down to bedrock ; its walk are solid
masonry. When the scrambled novelties of other sections of the
city are long gone, this chapel will remain, more beautiful
with age.

From such an architectural height, the sojotirner may go on
to examine new residence districts of modem pattern* spread-
ing over lands that were entirely vacant twenty~five years ago;
or he may choose to visit the "bad" regions* Oh, yet, he must
see the "slums" ! But though he can find plenty of tumble*
down houses, plenty of vicious haunts, he need hardly expect
to discover such immense unbroken areas of despair as exist*
for example, in London. He will find Chicago^ poverty

scape invaded by wide streets, on which ambitious merchants
are replacing "rookeries'* with commonplace but decent build-
ings. He will be shown extensive acres where community manu-
facturing or warehouse interests have "cleaned up," banish-
ing whole squares of shanties. He will see other squares with
play-grounds, gymnasium apparatus, clubhouses; and still
others where apartment buildings, clean at least, have risen
in place of huddles of foul shanties.

If he has time, the traveler may follow the course of one of
those "longest streets in the world" — say Halsted Street,
Milwaukee or Western Avenue — and see where daring real
estate men have plotted new subdivisions, to be filled speedily
with standard collections of dwellings, stores, hotels, and always
a moving picture theater twice as big as the old-time vaude-
ville house. In rows of bungalows, amazing in extent if
depressing in their sameness, now live people, or their de-
scendants, many of whom were once satisfied with a wooden
cottage close to a lumber yard.

Perhaps the visitor will push on into the actual suburbs,
noting no perceptible border-line between them and what is
officially "city." He will see clearly what a rush there has been
into new territory (which has grown five times as fast as
Chicago proper), what an eagerness to get among forests
or capture rolling meadows. He will be pleased to see the ad-
vance of good taste in house design, the obvious interest in
gardens, in landscaping. He can follow the numerous curves
of one of the longest and most attractive of highways —
Sheridan Road — pursuing it, anyhow, as far as Lake Forest,
where he can find (on the McCormick and Ryerson estates, for
example) gardens of challenging nobility,

But he has not yet "seen Chicago,"

Where are the "foreign quarters," the melting-pot districts,
that he has read about?

They are still there, many of them, yet possibly different
from what he expects. He can ride down Halsted Street, it is
true, and, just as reported, merchants* signs in nearly every
language will confront him, and masses of pedestrians, making
an entertaining parade of race and costume, will pass. But it
will not be long before the old "Ghetto," with its famous Max-
well Street market, will yield to the urge of the new genera-
tion to move away from anything so purely racial. As for the
Hull House district, which has seen one group of nationals
after another arrive, suffer and pass on, it is now hemmed
in by business development, which some day may possess it
entirely.

"Down there," "where foreign groups used to occupy con-
siderable areas, with walls of suspicion between, the tendency
has been for these groups to mingle, so that your guide will
say, "This block is Italian ;" over across the street is "Little
Holland. " The old-time battles between Irish and "Dago5*
come seldom. The Irish have moved. Meantime, except on fete
days, miles of "foreign district55 betray scarcely a sign other
than on store fronts of being anything but American. The
great immigrant influx stopped years ago. The children of
those who came in then are thinking of something else than the
"Old Country."

In cafes, theaters, and little stores there are echoes of old
"melting-pot" days. But just as expressive of the way the
foreign-born live today are streets, clean as a Chicago street
can hope to be, lined with small but welHcept dwellings in
which live people who make good money and save it,

As for "gangdom," let the visitor find it if he can* Without
a guide, such as a knowing newspaper reporter, he can never
identify the headquarters of this "mob" or that. Outside, the
cafes or saloons or flats where the gangsters plot look just
alike. The hotel that is often a rendezvous for the much-touted
Capone and his crew has a perfectly genteel exterior. And If
you are looking for a "beer baron" you may have to find him in
a luxurious "co-op" on one of the boulevards.

It Is very difficult for a chance visitor to Chicago to be
present at one of its celebrated murders.

Back to the towers he must go, to taste any flavor which
he can compare with that of another American city. He must
go back there to realize with any vividness what has happened
on this soil of sand and clay, where, little more than a century
ago, white men came to live for the first time.

If he can understand that, in years when Napoleon was
remaking an ancient Paris, these lake waves lapped a beach
a mile farther inland, that there was only a sluggish, muddy
river stream where now some of the tallest skyscraper peaks
pierce the clouds, that there were only two or three log cabins,
among thin trees, on the spot now covered by Grand Canyons
of enormous stores, batiks, and what not — he begins then to
realize a little of what Chicago history means.

He must also think of a century of trouble, a century of con-
quest over the difficulties this strange city site presented, a cen-
tury of racial jealousies, of conflict between strong men, strug-
gles between conservatives and radicals, between Utility and
Beauty, — a hundred years and more of settling arguments on
top of the effort to create, on a forbidding shore, a home fit to
occupy,

In this book, the authors have sketched, incompletely but
with a sincere effort to describe typical events, the story of
Chicago's century as well as what led to it.

Chicago, to some people, means brute force ; it means ruth-
lessness and even menace. Its "blood-and-thunder" reputation
has girdled the earth, outstripping again and again the fame
of its herculean business enterprise. Almost from the begin-
ning this has been true* The city has been studied, loved, hated,
praised and denounced out of all proportion to its statistical

position among the cities of the world. Only in the most indif-
ferent has it failed to awaken an ardent curiosity.

The present volume may serve to answer, in some degree,
a world-wide questioning.

PAET ONE

CHAPTER I

LOWLY the last of the glaciers shrank back from the lands
upon which it had lain so long. The Wisconsin Drift, rear
guard of the ice sheets that had covered much of North Amer-
ica, was melting in the warming sun. Age by age it receded,
and, as it went, an ocean formed on its southern edge, some-
what above the center of the continent. Lake Chicago, the
scientists afterwards called it, but no man was there to call
it anything at all in. its lifetime.

From this inland sea, the water ran off in rivers southwest
through the Great Valley of the Mississippi into the warm
Gulf of Mexico. Nature seemed to have decided that when
man should come to North American midlands he should look
to the kindly South for his trade.

But the grinding ice was whimsical. It dredged new ditches,
new hollows in the ground as it retreated, leaving mountains of
rocks here, scouring flat millions of acres there, making,
among other changes, a new bed for Lake Chicago, one into
which the waters settled and lay waiting for men to come along
and name Lake Michigan. More important to these men, when
they should appear, was the parting gesture with which the
ice gouged out a northern outlet for the great lake. As a sort
of farewell dig into the ribs of the land the glacier raked

a stupendous ditch to the north and east at the top of the
inland, sea, sending, thereafter, all drainage away by Lake
Erie, Lake Huron, Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River,

Nature had reconsidered. The tropical seas were no longer
in the destinies of the men who would inhabit the Northwest.
The cold Atlantic, the harder, more restless East would dom-
inate.

However, as though the call of the South died hard, the
ice sheet did a strange thing on the southwestern bank of
Lake Michigan. Drawing narrow margins, capricious hair-lines
on the face of the land, it left an eccentric continental divide,
a watershed, only some eight miles from the lake's edge. Lake
Michigan might drain into the Atlantic, but water falling
very close to its rim would still go down to southern seas. The
watershed was imperceptible to any eyes that could have seen
it then, just as it was imperceptible in the time of man, an
invisible ridge in the midst of flat marshes and damp prairie,
yet high enough to determine the site of an immense city.
From this great divide, the Des Plaines River ran south-
west to the Illinois River and so to the Mississippi, while
eastward to Lake Michigan ran the Chicago River in two
branches that joined a mile from the beach — all of these
channels lying lazy in meadows of rushes and mud. Only a
narrow strip of boggy land lay between the South Fork of
the Chicago River and the Des Plaines — the watershed
strip — called by the first Indians and white trappers "The
Chicago Portage." Over it redskins carried their canoes and
headed south by river, or north or east by lake.

Just why they called it "Chicago'* is disputed* On the
banks of the creek grew a weed, a sort of wild onion or garlic*
which the red man named "Chickagou." One tribal word for
"playful waters" was "Shecaugo," another word meaning
"destitute" was "Chocago" and, to some redskins, the word
"Shegahg" meant "skunk." A word that sounded like "Chi-
cago" was also used by the Indians to describe thunder, or the
voice of the Great Manitou or the Mississippi River- Also la the
4

late I700's there was an Indian chieftain named "Chicagou."
In general the word was interpreted as applying to a bad
smell.

Most meanings had one thing in common, observed Edgar
Lee Masters, one of the region's prominent literary figures in
times to come, — in one form or another they stood for
"strength."

The French heard the name when several of their first ex-
plorers brought back word that New France could be served
mightily by cutting a canal across this "Chicago portage."
It was the gateway to the Mississippi.

Joliet thought the job easy. La Salle, a few years later, was
not so sure. The Des Plaines River was fickle; at high water
the divide disappeared, canoes could go anywhere, and the
river spilled sometimes into Lake Michigan.

But for all the pros and cons, the great fact remained;
when civilized beings first viewed this region, the idea of a canal
was born, and like the theme of a symphony, the motif kept
weaving through the centuries of a city's history*

France bred men of steel in the time of Louis XIV. The
empire bubbled with ambition, military, artistic and commer-
cial. Imperial schemes gestated not only at Versailles, but in
remote colonies like those in North America. The passion for
finding new wealth went hand in hand with religious zeal. A
priest was close behind the first woodland traders who appeared
at the site of Chicago.

Many a courewr du bois* as the backwoodsmen were called
in French, may have traded with the Indians at this spot before
Pfere Jacques Marquette, on his second trip over the Illinois
water highway in the party of Louis Joliet, was forced by ill-
ness to winter at Chicago* But their names were never written
down and Chicago's history is considered to have begun when
Marquette the missionary, built or occupied a shelter on the

river somewhere within the limits of the present city. Near by
was the cabin of one Pierre Moreau, nicknamed, in bad French,
"The Mole," a pioneer bootlegger, selling fire-water to the
Indians and serving as agent for the tough old governor of
New France, Count Frontenac. From "The Mole's" cabin came
a mysterious herb doctor to help Marquette survive the bitter
winter. With spring the missionary had gone. He would write
down his impressions of embryonic Chicago before he died.

The dauntless and unlucky explorer, La Salle, saw Chicago's
command of water routes in terms of imperial conquest. It
would be useful to Louisiana, he saw, and he had his party
make maps and detailed descriptions.

Father Pierre Pinet, a Jesuit missionary, liked the point well
enough to remain there several summers, off and on, between
,1696 and 1700 toiling in his mission to win the heathen to
Christianity. Then he, too, passed on, and soon the influence
of them all, Marquette, Joliet, Pinet, was gone, for the French
spirit had waned with the death of Louis U grand motiarque*
British soldiers occupied log forts built by the French ; British
traders competed, with less success, against the Pierres and
Jeans along old trade routes. King George had the country,
by right of the Treaty of Paris, clear to the Mississippi east of
Louisiana. Red men, fighting some on one side, some on the
other, had slaughtered each other. Christianity had not been
impressed upon them by Marquette's successors, the soldiers.
Under Pontiac, the powerful chieftain, the Indians, uniting
somewhat, wiped out pioneer settlements and battled with vary*
ing success against the armed expeditions that followed- The
British had triumphed, but not for long, since the colonists,
revolting, soon broke their power and brought into being the
United States of America.

In so dramatic a time the Chicago portage drowsed along,
used only by journeying redskins. With ease, the neglected
vantage point on Lake Michigan might have been left to the
English had it not been for the reckless expedition of George
Rogers Clark farther south. Clark, commanding Kenteely
6

and Virginia revolutionists, swept, in spite of winter ice,
through southern Indiana and Illinois to surprise and capture
the British garrisons at Vincennes and Kaskaskia, checkmating,
thereby, the schemes of conquest held by the British Colonel
Hamilton at Detroit. Clark's stroke had shown that the whole
Northwest, including the obscure Chicago portage, would be
American. Furthermore it had given the later city of Chi-
cago reason for naming one of its long streets "Clark" —
where later so many skyscrapers were to stand.

Another Revolutionary soldier of equally desperate enter-
prise, "Mad" Anthony Wayne, made it doubly certain that
Chicago would be American, not Canadian.

His adventure deserves a word.

After the colonists had won their independence, Great Brit-
ain sat back to wait for the little Republic to collapse. No
people could make a success of hare-brained democracy, the
British felt* Soon the naive and wild young children would be
toppling back into the arms of the Mother Empire. Believing
this, England blandly refused to carry out the terms of peace
that had been written in 1796, and calmly held onto certain
isolated army posts in the American Northwest. She would
keep her finger on the fur trade and the Indians against the
day when scalping knives would be shining once more. Money
and golden promises kept the red men harassing the Amer-
ican settlers who poured over the Allegheny Mountains onto
the forests and plains.

Such armies as the young republic sent first into the terri-
tory to protect these settlers were outgeneraled by the Indians
who fought with British muskets, and it was not until 1794
that **Mad*' Anthony Wayne, leading a "Yankee Doodle"
army, crushed the natives at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in
Ohio* Through the next summer Wayne argued peace terms
with chieftains at Greenville, Ohio, and by August of that year,
1705, persuaded them to cede certain tracts to the United
States* Among these pieces of property, down toward the end
of the agreement, was listed;

"One piece of Land Six Miles Square at the mouth of the
Chickago River emptying into the Southwest end of Lake
Michigan where a fort formerly stood." (The refez*ence to a
fort was an allusion to a stockade rumored to have been built
by Indians during one of their wars a half century before,)

Thus occurred the first real estate transfer in the history
of the place.

It was of international politics rather than real estate that
"Mad Anthony" was thinking, however, as he signed the In-
dian treaty. British eyes were on this mouth of the Chickago
River, too. Shortly after Wayne's victory, British officers
were asking the House of Lords to build a fort at the portage
so that American traders might be shut off from the Missis-
sippi trade. The Lords let the matter drop* It was all so far
away.

Out of the reports of these British officers there has stalked
the first Chicagoan, Baptiste Point du Sable, whom the "red-
coats" found living in a trader's hut along the Chicago River
— a tall frontiersman and barterer, black, either a "f reedman"
or a fugitive slave from Kentucky. That he was intelligent,
well-mannered and sufficiently American to have been arrested
by the British, is well established. But he is merely a phantom
at best, gone from Chicago before its first chapter of building
began.

The British House of Lords, having moved too slowly to
seize the pivotal Chicago portage, saw the young Republic
grasp the whole Northwest more securely in 1803 when in
the Louisiana Purchase it acquired an empire from Spain*
All England could do was to hold onto the beaver pelts and
the red tomahawks of the region. Canadian traders still ruled
the markets and the Indians.

The voyageurs were gracious as successful merchants mast
always be — far different from the land-hungry Pennayl-
vanians and Virginians who bored their way into Indian ter~
8

ritory, wresting property away from the owners and holding
life cheap. Where the Americans too often debauched or killed
Indian women, the Canadian traders made love to the squaws,
marrying them readily — and often.

It was by muskets that the United States would rule its new
domains — staggering new domains that now reached the Rocky
Mountain tops. The forts at Detroit and Mackinac were not
sufficient. Another key citadel must be founded.

So on an August day, in 1803, the Pottawattomie tribes-
men of Illinois stand watching a little troop of American sol-
diers, blue-coated, their hair in pig-tails, march Northward
along the sandy beaches of Lake Michigan. They are in the
command of a twenty-one-year-old lieutenant, James Strode
Swearingen, who has led them from Detroit, afoot, on a jour-
ney lasting more than a month. As they come up to the river-
mouth to build a fort which they will name for the Secretary
of War, General Henry Dearborn, they see the flashing lake
to the East, sand and scrub timber to the West, Four cabins
stand by the river, cabins of Canadian traders, one owned by
a certain Le Mai, successor to Du Sable, one by Ouilmette, one
by Pettle, one belonging to John Kinzie, American, who is now
absent.

Lieut. Swearingen makes hasty notes :

"The river is about 80 yards wide where the garrison is in-
tended to be built, and from 18 feet and upwards deep, dead
water, owing to its being stopped up at the mouth by the
washing of sand from the lakes. The water is not fit to
use. * . "

A little behind this vanguard comes Captain John Whis-
tler, commandant, whose family name will be more famous
when his grandson James Abbott McNeill Whistler has made
two continents aware of his delicate etchings and paintings
and his sophisticated sarcasm- Captain Whistler's son, father
of the artist, is rowing along the lake shallows with his father
m advance of the ship Tracy* which follows from St. Joseph
with more troops, artillery, provisions, women.

The fort goes up on the dead waste by the slow, muddy
creek. All around are spongy marshes. Soldiers haul timbers
by hand, and slowly the block-houses, the stores, the barracks
and the stockade take form. The men grumble and quarrel.
Why pick out a spot like this for a fort?

But the work goes on. The tremendous lake tempers the
winter storms that come down from what will be called Medi-
cine Hat in the Northwest; it also checks the full blasts of
prairie heat.

CHAPTER II

OK nine years Fort Dearborn drowsed along, its population
increasing little if at all, its existence enlivened by nothing
more dramatic than the occasional arrival of an extraordi-
narily fine load of furs, vague rumors of an Indian "scare," a
wedding in 1804 between the commandant's daughter and the
son of a Detroit trader, dog-fights, deer-hunts and squabbles
between officers in the garrison.

Dramatic forces were at work, however, to the south and
east. In the wilderness a great man was rising — Tecumseh,
the Shawnee, vain dreamer of a future of pacifism, socialism,
brotherly love and the Confederated Indian Tribes of America.

Tecumseh had fought in redskin ranks against General
Wayne, but he was no mere warrior. Wisely he analyzed his
people's plight. They were split into tribes which could be
fired to fratricidal jealousy by intriguing whites. They were
commanded by chieftains who could be tricked or bribed into
selling community property for whiskey. Liquor was under-
mining the native shrewdness and character. So Tecumseh
preached two things, temperance and communism. Whiskey
and private property should both be abolished.

For his crusade Tecumseh adroitly used his mystic brother,
Prophet'* Tenskwautawa, which name, translated, meant

"The Open Door"; with the religious tongue of this ally to
captivate the thousands who could not catch the logic of the
cause, Tecumseh triumphed for a time. Tribe after tribe joined
his plan for a socialistic confederacy. In an incredibly shoi't
time whiskey-drinking decreased among his followers — indeed
vanished from large sections of the Northwest.

To William Henry Harrison, the stripling governor of the
Territory, Tecumseh brought his plan in 1810, The sale of
land by individual tribes must cease. The Wyandots had sold
vast sections of Ohio to the whites in 1805, the Miamis had
ceded 2,000,000 acres to Harrison, the Piankeswaws had given
up cheaply the territory west of the Wabash River. Such trans-
actions must stop, said the red orator, such breaches of the
Greenville Treaty were wrong. Killing of Indians must stop,
too. Whites must no longer provoke tribes to fight each other.

As Tecumseh, four hundred braves at his back, stood before
Harrison at Vincennes, the white leader asked him to come
into the gubernatorial cabin and sit down*

"Houses are built for you to hold councils in ; Indians hold
theirs in the open air. . . . The sun is my father, and the
earth is my mother ; on her bosom I will repose," answered the
blanketed statesman as he sat himself down upon the earth.

Sitting, or at times standing, there in the sun, Tecumseh
delivered the speech that has lived as his race's most devas-
tating, yet simple, arraignment of the wealth-hunting whites:

"Brother : You wish to prevent the Indians to do as we wish
them, to unite and let them consider their landb as the com-
mon property of the whole. You take tribes aside and advise
them not to come into this measure. The reason, I tell you
this, is you want by your distinctions of Indian tribes, in
allotting to each a particular tract, to make them to war with
each other. You never see an Indian endeavor to make the
white people do so. You are continually driving the red peo-
ple, when at last you will drive them onto the great lake, when
they can neither stand nor work.

"Since my residence at Tippecanoe, we have ^endeavored to

level all distinctions, to destroy village chiefs, by whom all
mischief Is done. It is they who sell our lands to Americans.
Brother, this land that was sold, and the goods that were
en for it, was only done by a few, ... in the future we
/\are prepared to punish those who may propose to sell land.
' If you continue to purchase them it will make war among the
'"""different tribes and at last I do not know what will be the
[inconsequence among the white people. Brother, I wish you
Lwould take pity on the red people and do what I have re-
N quested. If you will not give up the land, and do cross the
(\ boundary of your present settlement, it will be very hard and
produce great trouble among us.

"How can we have confidence in the white people?
"When Jesus Christ came upon the earth you killed Him
and nailed Him on a cross. You thought He was dead, and
you were mistaken. You have Shakers among you and you
laugh and make light of their worship.

IT*"* "Everything I have told you is the truth. The Great Spirit
n has inspired me.n

Jin the face of such practical applications of Christianity,
the whites could do nothing, and matters went on as before,
with Tecumseh traveling the midlands from the Lakes to the
Moridas, preaching his doctrine of unity and cooling his war-
riors against premature bloodshed.

"You shall know when to begin war when the arm of Tecum-
+**> seh stretches across the heavens like pale fire," he said.

War came too soon for Tecumseh. In 1811 the United
States and Great Britain, feeling gingerly around for each
other's throats as they prepared for the grapple that was to
e the next year, began recruiting allies among the red men
— — some tribes joining with the Yankees, more of them with the
•redcoats, or rather with those representatives of the redcoats,
the love-making Canadians.

The majority of Indians in Tecumseh's dwindling Confed-
eracy sympathized with the British, but the statesman held
them in check, at his largest camp, Tippecanoe, Indiana, while

he went his coaxing, pleading way among the Cherokees of the
South, rebuilding his political fences. Meanwhile, that half-
crazy brother of his, "The Open Door,'5 went mad with impa-
tience and loosed Tecumseh's naked band on the white army
which General Harrison had brought to Tippecanoe. Defeat,
more dampening to the Indian spirit than to its arms, met
them on Nov, 6, 1811, and when Tecumseh arrived upon the
scene his Confederacy was completely wrecked; most of the
tribes were independently suing for peace. In anguish the
chieftain thought of killing "The Open Door,5' then reconsid-
ered and set gallantly to work to plead for unity once more*

The battle of Tippecanoe had saved Fort Dearborn, for
Tecumseh had planned to raze it, along with everything on
his side of the Ohio River, unless the whites made good their
broken treaties. Earlier in the year he had been among the
Pottawattomies and Winnebagos of northern Illinois* prepar-
ing them for the tragic uprising which must, sooner or later,
come.

But the little fort was not saved for long. By Spring the
War of 1812 was on, and Tecumseh himself a duly appointed
brigadier-general in the British army, able to mass a horde
of fighting men if not to weld them into the peaceful Confed-
eracy of his dreams. Warriors from his allies, the Wiimebagos,
in April massacred some men at the farm of a certain Lee*
outside the Fort Dearborn stockade, and by August the
friendly Pottawattomies, nearer neighbors of the fort, were
showing signs of insolence.

Since the American fort at Detroit was obviously doomed to
fall into the hands of the British and Indians, the government
ordered Commandant Heald, in charge of Fort Dearborn, to
destroy his guns and ammunition and withdraw to Fort Wayne.
Heald summoned the Pottawattomie chiefs to council* told
them his plan and drew up a bargain ; he would give them the
liquor and supplies of the fort in return for safe passage to

Fort Wayne. They agreed, not knowing that their brothers
were so near to the capture of Detroit.

But Tecumseh was not to be so easily dismissed from cal-
culation. His runners arrived outside Fort Dearborn with the
news of how the war of liberation was going in other quar-
ters, and the Pottawattomies flared.

John Kinzie, the Quebec-born trader who founded the first
Chicago dynasty, was living in his cabin near the fort, and,
knowing the Indians as he did — they made a warm friend of
him, calling him "Silverman" for his skill in making trinkets
for them — he warned Heald not to destroy his extra arms.
That would be to walk into danger handcuffed. Heald carried
out orders, however, destroying his excess of firearms and pow-
der, and, forgetting his bargain, poured the whiskey into the
river. Red scouts, lying in the tall grass, saw their promised
liquor go downstream, and word of Heald's treachery ran
through the assembled tribesmen.

At nine in the morning of August 15th, the garrison
marched out, led by the famous Indian scout, William Wells,
who had generously come with nine friendly Miami warriors
to guide the troops to Fort Wayne.

The soldier band, by some quirk of depression, played the
Dead March as it emerged, and Captain Wells, walking in
front, had a face blackened with powder — the Indian and
Long Knife sign of "trouble ahead." Less than fifty soldiers,
twelve or fifteen civilians sworn in as militia, the women in
the rear with a wagon-load of children, they marched, John
Kinzie and his family among them, lugubrious because of ap-
proaching peril and loss of property.

Along what was later to be Michigan Avenue they wound,
their escort of Pottawattomies, some on ponies, paralleling them
inland, nearer to the sand dunes which ran a hundred yards
from the beach, A half mile from the Fort, this escort took
to the scrub timber, and a mile further on Indian heads began
popping up above the dune-tops, "like turtles out of the
water." Shots rang out* Captain W^lls began to fight, while

his Miamis made off, scolding the Pottawattomies for their fool-
ish outbreak. Wells was soon dead, attended by the victims
which so redoubtable a frontier battler might be expected to
take with him to the Happy Hunting Ground. The redskin
who killed him stopped to cut out his heart and eat it, the
truest tribute that a savage could give*

Confusion — desperate courage — puffs of musket-smoke,
women hacking at red hands with butcher knives, "braves"
circling the garrison, then closing, the fight hand to hand
and scattering widely. Twenty-six soldiers, the twelve militia-
men, Captain Wells, two women and twelve children were dead
and many of the fifty-odd survivors wounded. The Kinzies, as
old favorites of the redskins, were spared, a daughter, Mrs.
Helm, being heroically saved from a frenzied warrior by
Black Partridge, a cooler redskin— an exploit which in marble
was to commemorate the disaster in the city of later days, Kin-
zie, refraining from fighting, remembered afterward that "a
whole wagon-load of children was tomahawked and some of
the women were carried off by the chiefs. And some of the
men was tortured to death."

Next day the fort was plundered and burned, the prisoners
distributed, and the Pottawattomies left for their various vil-
lages while the mangled corpses lay on the lake-front for the
buzzards and the wolves to eat. Their bones were lying there,
the two brass cannon were sprawling on the river bank* the
empty houses gaping, when red-coats rode by that Winter*

In 1816, when John Kinzie came back, the skeletons were
half buried by the drifting sand. Soldiers, coming to rebuild
the fort in that year, collected, coffined and buried the re-
mains. Even then the wind and water were to bare them once
more. John Wentworth, who was to be mayor of the city, and
the Northwest politician of whom Abraham Lincoln would
say, "he knows more than most men," came to the city in 188£
and afterwards said, "Among my earliest recollections was
seeing projections of coffins from the steep banks of the lake-
shore south of the fort above Lake Street*"
16

CHAPTER III

T WAS the Fourth of July, 1816.

Tecumseh had been two years in his grave. At the Battle of
the Thames In Canada he had felt death at hand, and had
taken off his red brigadier's coat and put on his old feathers
and moccasins for the fight. He wanted to die like an Indian.

The War of 1812, into which the old empire and the young
republic had drifted, was now over, with nothing in particu-
lar settled, and with blackened cabins dotting many a clear-
ing in the Northwest, many a red tribe nearer its doom.

Still the Canadians, their canoes full of gay trinkets and
thick pelts, their boat-songs haunting the Indian women, held
the rich trade of the woods beyond Chicago. And as ever they
were whispering evil things of those grasping conquistadors,
the Yankee "Long Knives,"

Since the previous year John Kinzie had been urging the
government to reestablish the garrison at Chicago. From the
river towns of the mid-country, petitions had gone to Wash-
ington asking that the region be more competently garrisoned,
and in the summer of 1815 the thing had been decided. The
government, convinced by the wretched experiences of the
late war, had settled upon the necessity of erecting a line of
forts across the Northwest.

Fort Dearborn went up again, one hundred and twelve sol-
diers under Captain Hezekiah Bradley arriving for the task
on that July 4 from the schooner General Wayne. Life was
taken up where it had been cut off four years before. Now,
perhaps, civilization seemed a little nearer. Mail was brought
once or twice a month from the nearest post-office, Fort Wayne.
Provisions arrived on ships from Detroit or occasionally "on
the hoof," as herds of cattle were driven overland for the
soldiers to butcher.

Since Spring the American fur-traders had begun to gather
near Fort Dearborn, and by Autumn John Kinzie reopened
his house — quite a place as places went on the frontier in pio-
neer days, a house large enough for a big family, with a
kitchen garden, some sort of lawn, and four ornamental trees
in front, probably poplars.

"The good old times" of which the frontiersmen's children
talked so wistfully down through the nineteenth century
lived in the Kinzie home. Kinzie himself had always been a
great hand with the fiddle at wakes and gay parties, and m
his reopened home children danced to his scraping, There was
smell of venison cooking, of wild duck, trout and partridge.
Travelers dropped in and received bed and board for the
asking.

In the Autumn of 1818 the Kinzies entertained a strange
boy, Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard, who was at sixteen one of
the daring youngsters sent out by John Jacob A&tor, back m
New York City, to serve the American Fur Company in its
bold trade-war upon the older and more powerful British
Hudson Bay Company. Success had come to Astor, and he
reached further and ever further toward the Pacific* Out from
his clearing-house at Mackinac went expeditious to found new
posts, and in one of these — a group of a hundred men in twelve
bateaux which skirted Lake Michigan and doubled toward
Chicago on the southern end — was young Hubbard* As the
party landed south of Fort Dearborn to get their bearings,
the boy climbed a tree and looked north.
18

His breath almost stopped, for he was seeing his first prairie.
Grass waved for miles, tapestried with, wild flowers. On the
horizon were the timber-groves of Blue Island and the Des
Plaines River. A herd of wild deer grazed contentedly near
by and a pair of foxes played before him. White in the dW-
tance glistened the lime-slaked walls of the fort. Climbing
down, he reentered the canoe, and that morning he break-
fasted with the Kinzies.

The family circle was so normal, so homelike, that the boy,
only a child after all, suddenly thought of his family back
in Montreal and wept. Mrs. Kinzie dried his eyes. He said to
her, "You remind me of my mother. This seems like home to

me."

Nevertheless, in three days adventure was bright f>gain, and
the boy went from the Chicago fur-depot up the south branch
of the river with the voyageurs, and following the traditional
water-route, sought to pass Mud Lake, as they called the
swamp that connected the Chicago River with the Des Plaines.
From dawn to dark they pushed their canoes on rollers through
the sticky morass, waist-deep, sometimes holding to the boats
to keep from sinking over their heads. In camp it took hours
of work to clean the bloodsucking leeches off their bodies. Their
legs swelled with inflammation.

Mud!

For two score years thereafter it was Chicago's mud that
stuck in the minds as well as on the legs of people passing
through it.

James Madison, President of the United States four years
before, had foreseen the spot's strategic location, and had
named it as the northern terminus of the ship canal which
he asked Congress to build through the Des Plaines and Illi-
nois Kivers so that lake traffic might sail to the Mississippi.
But nothing had come of this. The Northwest was too far

away from Washington, D. C., just as it had been too far
away from the British House of Lords.

It was the Mississippi River regions that the Eastern States
visioned as the important part of the Northwest Territory.
While Chicago and Northern Illinois were still virgin wilder-
ness, the Southern portion of the State was filling rapidly with
settlers from Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky — those pio-
neers whom Andrew Jackson called "half -horse, half-alligator*"
Men of the South they were, for all that many of them hated
slavery, and as they took up homesteads in lower Illinois,
their trade, like their loyalties, ran southward.

So little had they thought of the Great Lakes region that
when Illinois became a separate territory in 1812, they pro-
tested not at all when its northern boundary was run due west
from the southern tip of Lake Michigan, leaving Fort Dear-
born and the river-mouth in what was to become Wisconsin.
Chicago's future then seemed to be fixed outside of Illinois.

And there it might have remained but for the political
shrewdness — perhaps statesmanship — of Nathaniel Pope, rep-
resentative in Congress for the Territory of Illinois. Although
Pope was Southern, up from Kentucky, he was pro-Union in
the sectional lines that were being drawn, even then, between
States that permitted slavery and those that forbade it.

Since the formation of the republic North and South had
striven for supremacy, and at last had agreed to strike a bal-
ance of power by admitting new States to the Union in pairs,
one "slave" State for every "free" State.

Thus Illinois, which was begging for statehood in 1818, was
credited to the anti-slavery forces and paired off against Mis-
sissippi, which would be pro-slavery. But Nathaniel Pope well
knew that in case of division between North and South, the
State of Illinois, as things then stood, would side with the
slave section. This was serious, for although the nation had
not yet begun to rock to the bitter quarrels which were to end
in the awful blood letting of the '60s, thoughtful men in 1818
were seeing the danger of disunion on the horizon* And it was
20

on this fear that Pope played when he persuaded President
James Monroe and Congress to include Chicago in the new
State of Illinois.

If Illinois* northern boundary were moved up some sixty
miles Into Wisconsin, said Pope, it would capture the mouth
of the Chicago River, a place certain to become in time the
gateway to the canal and the Mississippi. Through this port,
Pope contended, would come Northern and Eastern blood by
way of the Great Lakes — energetic merchants and thrifty
farmers of the Eastern States — a civilization which would
counterbalance that of the down-state Southerners. Thus Illi-
nois would not only become settled more rapidly, but its popu-
lation would be ideal, a mixture of North and South; Illi-
nois would develop, Pope seemed to think, into a sort of model
commonwealth, bulwark against any threat of disunion which
might arise in either national group.

Put the Chicago River port in Illinois and the State will
become the political keystone of the Union, Pope urged. At
one end you will have Fort Dearborn commanding the Great
Lakes, while at the other extreme, deep down in the South,
you will have Cairo, watching over the junction of the Mis-
sissippi and Ohio Rivers. Illinois will be in a position to crush
secession North or secession South. Let Illinois contain within
itself both ends of the proposed ship canal. Tie the Great
Lakes to the Mississippi, upon which traffic is already enor-
mous. One observer journeying upstream in that year counted
six hundred and forty-three flatboats drifting downstream
with produce for New Orleans.

Pope's arguments told. Illinois was allowed to bite a wide
chunk out of Wisconsin's southern section, and the new State
came into the Union with a mud village tied to it for the sake
of future profits and the Union, which must be preserved.

Even with such master diplomacy smoothing the way, it
took questionable juggling at the last minute to get Illinois
into the sisterhood of States, for Monroe had authorized the
admission upon one condition. ; — there must be counted 40,000

population within the borders. Here was a problem, for, count
as they might, the politicians could find no more than 30,000
noses in all the backwoods. United States marshals, however,
solved the difficulty by enumerating immigrants as they came
across the State in their creaking, lurching, covered wagons.
Tabulators caught these travelers and their families again
and again as they passed — and the quota was made. Within
forty years — so short a span in the history of a nation — both
of Pope's visions would have become fact — Chicago would be
a great port, through which had come tens of thousands of
Easterners to tie the State to the Union that disunion would
threaten in 1861. The cold, hard fire of the North and East
would tell the story; Illinois in the Civil War swung weight
against Southern secession such as no other State could show.

Other eyes, scientific rather than political, saw possibilities
in the shabby little groups of cabins that sat in the mud
around Fort Dearborn. Henry Howe Schoolcraft, author and
explorer, looking at the place in 18&0, thought it destined to
become "a great thoroughfare for strangers, merchants and
travelers," although it presented to his eye not more than a
dozen huts and barely sixty souls.

Less optimistic was the report given the national government
in 1823 by Major Long, the surveyor who had been sent out
to chart the proposed ship canal over the Chicago portage.
That official set Chicago's climate down as inhospitable, its
soil as sterile, its scenery as monotonous and uninviting* He
saw only a few huts of bark or logs, filthy, disgusting, wholly
without comforts, and inhabited by a "miserable race of men'*
scarcely equal to the Indians from whom most of them seemed
to have descended.

Through the 320s the settlement was only a police station
against the Indians. There was no telling what the redskins
would do. Governor Cass of Michigan met them at Chicago m

1821 and dealt with the Ottawas and Pottawattomies for their
lands — a treaty which enriched some "early Chicagoans" —
but the old racial hatreds simmered, refusing to die. Some
tribes were satisfied with money, others drowned their woes in
whiskey, but there were always recalcitrants, chieftains who
remembered Tecumseh.

The "Winnebago scare" of 1827 illustrated how fear could
grip the whites even in a fortified community like Chicago.
That summer redskins attacked soldiers in boats on the upper
Mississippi, and, near Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, surprised
and murdered a Canadian half-breed named Gagnier.

Out of all proportion to the damage done, grew terror in the
Northwest. Governor Cass, then in the region, heard that the
Winnebago tribesmen were on the warpath, hastened to Prairie
du Chien, and, falling upon the Winnebago encampment as
he went, bluffed the chiefs into smoking a pipe of peace.

Two days later he was at Galena, toward which on every
trail frightened settlers were rushing with their families.
Keeping up this record-breaking trip, he descended to the
mouth of the Illinois (using a light birch-bark canoe with
twelve paddlemen) and up that river to Chicago; incidentally,
he passed one wretched night "stalled" on Mud Lake.

There were no soldiers then in the fort, which was occupied
by the Indian agent, Alexander Wolcott, and only a corporal's
guard of militia could be mustered. Among these, as Cass
hurried on northward to complete his circuit of sixteen hundred
wilderness miles, there was despair. The "red devils" would
attack any day, it was expected. Fortunately Gurdon Hubbard
was there* That boy had now become a man, had won the
friendship of the Indians, and had earned from them the title
Pa*-ea~ma-ta-be, or "The Swift Walker." He had once walked
seventy-five miles in a single day. As a trader there was none
better than he*

Now in the crisis of the "Winnebago scare" he offered to set
out to bring up help from Danville, and he did so, riding
swimming swollen streams, walking prodigiously, and

returning with the Danville volunteers to find that at Chicago
peace had been made with the Winnebagos. The march ended
in a drinking-bout instead of a battle, men forgetting their
fright — it had been little more than that, the whole affair —
in a happy orgy. However, the news of the Winnebago troubles
was spread over the East, where it was sufficient to discourage
many a young man from following that national injunction,
"Go West."

Quite to the contrary operated the next, and last, of the
Indian troubles, "The Black Hawk War." Black Hawk, in-
heritor of Tecumseh's policies, objected when the Sac and Fox
tribes, of which he was an under-chief, ceded to the whites all
their northwestern lands east of the Mississippi River* On the
Iowa side of the river he sat nursing his spleen as runners told
him how the settlers were ploughing up old Indian villages
to plant corn. In May, 1832, he paddled across the river with
his young men, and fell upon the whites, burning, scalping
and routing the first Illinois militiamen. But the "war" was
soon over, for the militiamen were promptly reinforced, and
officered by United States Army generals, and in the late
summer were hounding Black Hawk's little army through
southwestern Wisconsin. On the Bad Axe River, in August,
the clouds of white pursuers made an end of the red forces and
Black Hawk stole West, to die five years later IB his camp
on the Des Moines River.

The chieftain had, unwittingly, hastened the settling of those
regions he sought to depopulate. Into northern Illinois and
Wisconsin had come Michigan and Indiana militiamen; into
it, too, had come United States Army detachments from the
East, all of whom carried home entrancing stories of the beau-
tiful country and of the black soil that had seemed so firm
beneath their feet that Summer* Eastern newspapers, chroni-
cling the war-events, told their readers of the future riches
24

that awaited emigrants to this Northwestern country. Many
hundreds of young men, reading of the land or listening to
soldiers tell of it, said, "It ought to be a good place to move to."

That Chicago shared in this advertising is not a matter of
record. Black Hawk had done little or nothing for it. As was
to have been expected, terrorized settlers for miles around
poured into Fort Dearborn at the first alarm and lived there,
five or six families crowded into a single room, for days while
the soldiers drilled outside. General Winfield Scott, famous
Indian fighter and Congressional gold-medalist, arrived off
the village with his "regulars" in a steamboat — the first to
reach Lower Lake Michigan. But the soldiers brought no
glory — only disease. Cholera, which had already devastated
Europe and was causing a hundred deaths a day in New York,
came to Chicago with Scott's men, and Fort Dearborn was
immediately turned into a hospital. A great pit was dug at
Lake and Wabash Avenues and into it were dumped the
cholera victims.

When peace arrived, the soldiers left and so did the cholera.
The traders and settlers flocked back, and the normal popula-
tion of one hundred souls gathered again on the marshy river-
banks.

But it was only the lull before the storm of migration.

Seven years before, the Erie Canal, then as marvelous an
achievement as a transcontinental railroad would seem in 1869,
had been opened and made safe for boats over ninety feet in
length. There were packets running as far west as Buffalo.
Perhaps not all of them were at first comparable to the one
which brought Joseph Jefferson, the boy-actor, Chicagoward
with his father in 1838, for that vessel, as the youth recalled
it, resembled "a Noah's ark with a flat roof," and it was
"painted white and green and enlivened with blue window-
blinds and a broad red stripe running from bow to stern." But
these creeping arks brought people from Troy to Buffalo in
comparative comfort. The remainder of the trip around the

lakes was leisurely and decent, ending in a few weeks' time

at the port of Chicago, which was a lonely mudhole or a door

to Paradise as one chose to view it.

1 The Northwest's day of glory was dawning. The Indians

were whipped, the Eastern migration was stirring. The last

picture of the old day is a sentimental one — the red man's

farewell-

Fittingly enough, the funeral ceremonies of Indian sov-
ereignty take place in the town where the white man's Western
regime was to flower — Chicago. The red chieftains of the Pot-
tawattomies have powwowed with paleface leaders and made a
deal. They are to give up five million acres in Illinois and
Michigan and go West to a tract of similar size across the
Mississippi. For that they are to receive whiskey, money, and
goods — a pitiable amount subject to further reservations, quib-
bles, and chicaneries. They are being robbed; family relation-
ships, "pulls," ancient friendships, old grudges, are at work,
and certain white families, already fattened upon the redskin's
ignorance and love of liquor, are to grow fatter still on this
last "steal."

Around the village are encamped five thousand Indians —
braves, squaws, pappooses. They have come to say good-bye
with all pomp and ceremony, and as they group at the Council
House on this 18th day of August, 18S5, their men are naked
except for breech-clouts and their skins are bright with scarlet,
yellow, and blue paint. Their mouths are curved, by black
and vermilion paint, into horrible grimaces — as though to
grin even at their own obsequies. They dance as though tliey
are happy, their war-feathers flying. They promenade as if in
triumph. Before them go the drum-beaters, thumping out the
rhythms to which the horde steps, squats, bends, and howls*
Slowly they weave through the village, halting in front of
every log house to go through their convulsions. They are
performing their ritual of war— their twisting, leaping Dance

of Blood. That crimson fluid trickles down through the shining
sweat from wounds that their owners do not feel; knives and
tomahawks gleam recklessly. Eyes roll, mouths foam, whoops
rise staccato and spasmodic. Bending over, the braves strike
imaginary enemies with their clubs or cut out imaginary white
hearts in the sod.

They, who have let the palefaces rob them of their domains,
are showing how terrible they are. White women, watching
from cabin windows, hide their eyes; some of them faint.
Even so hard-headed a newcomer as John D. Caton, afterward
Chief Justice of Illinois, as he looks down at the orgy, thinks
he is seeing a picture of hell itself and a carnival of condemned
spirits.

At length the pathetic inferno is over, the Indians have their
stingy little price ; they go back to their wigwams, where their
wild cries simmer steadily down as the night wears on and
where, in the days that follow, they are packing up for the
good-bye trip across the "Father of Waters55 to Kansas and,
in a few more years, to oblivion. Among them is Medore Beau-
bien, one of the twenty-three half-breed children of "Squaw-
man" Beaubien, Chicago notable. Medore has been a beau
among the white belles, a business man of the village and
member of the first town council, but in him the red blood is
stronger than the white.

By the end of the century, Chicago's first inhabitants will
have disappeared — the lost tribes of the Pottawattomies.

Jean Scfttawman Beaubien, referred to above, had no more than twentj
children, not all of whom were half-breeds. It was his brother Mark wh(
fcad the twenty-three children, all wholly of white blood.

CHAPTER IV

LJ P TO the year 1833 it seemed that either Milwaukee or
Michigan City would be as likely to be the gateway to the
Northwest as would Chicago. Both were less muddy, larger,
and possessed of better harbors. In 1830 Michigan City had
over three thousand people, enormously more than Chicago—
and far better dressed. Its harbor had been improved by the
government, its piers ran out into the lake, and vessels up to
two hundred tons called for the farmers' grain. Chicago, in that
year, was not even incorporated, although the commissioners
of the Illinois and Michigan Canal had laid it out as a town in
a survey dated August 4, 1830, and had gone so far as to name
its principal streets State, Dearborn, Clark, La Salle, and so
on.

Even in 1833, when Congress began discussing Lake Michi-
gan improvements, so close a student as Stephen A, Douglas
thought it better to spend money for a harbor at the mouth
of the Calumet River, fourteen miles to the South, tJm& at the
spot where dismal Garlic Creek flowed into the lake. However,
a young army engineer insisted that the outlet of the Chicago
River was the logical place for the improvements, and under
his advice $25,000 was voted to clean the mouth and erect a
thousand-foot pier. The young engineer was Jefferson
28

for whose hanging Chicago would be calling within thirty
years and less.

On July 12, 1834, the schooner Illinois got over the sand
bar which had been lowered by a timely river-flood, and
Chicago's harbor-life began.

More important to Chicago just then was the immigration
that, pouring into the Northwest, found the village last in a
chain of outfitting points. The East was already old. New
York had over two hundred thousand people, and, with Irving,
Cooper and Bryant, was "intellectual." Boston, with something
like seventy thousand population, had Emerson and Harvard,
the latter having seen two centuries of growth. Veterans of the
Revolution were gray-haired.

As the ?30s advanced, the voices of young, scatter-brained
sons rose in those sedate, prosperous, and Puritan families of
New England, demanding a chance to go West. New York
boys, seeing no future for themselves in aged Manhattan,
wanted to go out to Chicago and look around.

Grave good-byes were spoken. Prayers were offered. The vil-
lages saw those crazy wanderers start out, carting as much of
their goods as they could take; Colonial bedsteads, bookcases
and chairs, rare boxes of mahogany or cedar, china-ware fash-
ioned in England, spinning-wheels — a treasury of household
articles which were to be cherished for three-quarters of a
century in lonely farmhouses of Northern Illinois, until the
antique shops of Chicago would gather them in.

Few immigrants into the Northwest were wealthy enough
to make the entire journey by boat along the canal and around
the lakes* Many men with families accomplished the entire
trek in wagons that were drawn by horses or ozen. Young men
unencumbered rode horseback or tramped tremendous dis-
tances. Starting out with the few dollars they could earn, bor-
row, or wheedle from thrifty parents, they made the trip as
best they could*

Silas B* Cobb, who became one of Chicago's big men, left
Vermont and on reaching Buffalo found that his pocket had

been picked; only seven dollars left. The captain of a lake
schooner offered to take the boy as a deck passenger if he
would supply his own food and give the officer what money was
left. Cobb spent three dollars on a ham, six loaves of bread
and a bedtick filled with shavings. For the remaining four
dollars the captain gave him a five-weeks5 ride through fierce
gales that drenched his bed and half froze his body. Arrived
at last in Chicago — a village still without a harbor — the cap-
tain demanded three dollars more for the passage. For three
days, while the other passengers were taken ashore in canoes
and boats, the youth was kept prisoner on board. At last a
chance acquaintance loaned him the three dollars and he
came to the muddy village.

On August 10, 1833, Chicago was incorporated as a town,
a census showing forty-three houses and less than two hundred
inhabitants. New buildings went up, however, in time for the
Indians5 "farewell" council and the boom marched steadily
along. Immigrants jammed the meager hotels; men slept on
the floors. On the outskirts of the village, on most nights, there
was a ring of camp fires where the covered wagons parked*

To care for travelers and transients was the first duty of
Chicago, The Town. The Sauganash Tavern was the most
popular hostelry — named for an admired Indian chief known
in English as Billy CaldwelL Mark Beaubien, one-time ferry-
man in days before bridges, was host at the Sauganash, fran-
tically proud of the frame lean-to which had been added to
its log structure. Mark was a capital "mine host/* wearing,
upon gay occasions, a big blue coat with brass buttons and
nankeen trousers, letting the kitchen run itself, gossiping with
the half-breed loungers, scraping his fiddle at dances ; singing
an endless ballad about the surrender of Detroit, neglecting his
hotel (as he had his ferry) to race his horses- Always happy-
go-lucky and busy, Mark by different marriages became th©
30

father of twenty-three children. His brother Jean Baptiste
Beaubien was fur-company agent, colonel of militia and many
other things. A score fewer were his children than Mark's —
the most famous of them being Alexander, who lived into the
twentieth century, revered mistakenly as the first white child
born in Chicago.

The town's poll-lists, which had registered half of the voters
as French Canadians or half-breed Indians in the ?&0s, now
filled with Anglo-Saxon names. Archibald Clybourn, descended
by a strange mix-up of marriages from a woman captured
by the Indians during the Revolution, had opened a packing-
plant on the north branch of the river. Philo Carpenter was
a druggist, John Caton a lawyer, P. F. W. Peck a merchant;
J. Bailey was postmaster and John Calhoun was an editor,
having shipped out his printing-press from New York in 1833
to found the Chicago Weekly Democrat.

A gigantic young man, with a Dartmouth diploma behind
him, John Wentworth had in 532 walked into town barefoot,
so the legend runs. Forty years later he described what Chica-
goans were like in those 530s :

"We had people from almost every clime, and almost every
opinion. We had Jews and Christians, Protestants, Catholics
and infidels; among Protestants there were Calvinists and
Arminians. Nearly every language was represented. Some
people had seen much of the world, and some very little. Some
were quite learned and some were ignorant."

Wentworth, describing the jocular war dance which the
townsfolk held after a wedding, observed, "The Indian war
dance to me is much more sensible than nine-tenths of those
which are now practiced at so many of "our fashionable parties."

Other diversions amused the Chicagoans when they were not
hammering together clapboard houses or farming or keeping
shop* A debating-society raged (Jean Baptiste Beaubien,
president) with headquarters in the fort, and long hours of
oratory were devoted to the passionate discussion of Andrew
Jackson's policies or of the virtues of England's Reform Law.

Checkers engaged the milder citizens. At night the very wicked
ones would "play at cards," properly frowned upon by the
New Englanders, who considered the queens and jacks satanic
portraits; and tin cups, dipping into the ever-open ^ cask of
whiskey, drove away the worries attendant upon building a
city out of mud. At one end of town would rise shouting guf-
faws of merrymakers while at the other the "respectables,5*
bearded gentry with demure wives, would be splashing through
the mud to prayer meeting.

A piano arrived from the East in the middle '30s, It was a
godsend. Ladies sat down to it and played "The Battle of
Prague," "The Mogul," "The Bluebottle Fly," and other
tunes of the time. But perhaps while strong men wept over
these melodies, thinking of civilization "back East," and while
half-breeds lounged within hearing, marveling at the miracle
of the music-box, there would come word that wolves had been
spotted in a grove a few miles south. Then, behind a horde of
dogs, the town would take up the chase. Once in 1833 the
unofficial town crier raised the populace to kill a bear, out in
the wilds at a point where, in 1928, passengers disembarked
daily from the Twentieth Century Limited,

Harriet Martineau, a woman writer from lofty England,
was surprised to receive from Chicago women, when she arrived
in the village, a bouquet of prairie flowers. And although it
startled her to find "a family of half-breeds setting up a car-
riage and wearing fine jewelry," she went on to say, "There
is some allowable pride in the place about its society* It as a
remarkable thing to meet such an assemblage of educated,
refined, and wealthy persons as may be found there, laving
in small, inconvenient houses on the edge of a wild prairie/*

Churches came to help tame the pioneers. A young French
priest, Father St. Cyr, celebrated mass in 1888 on the river-
bank and, before the year was out, had built a chapel* That
same year the First Presbyterian Church was established, and
a Baptist, a Methodist and an Episcopal church followed at
once.

Yet stronger than all the delights, the pursuits, the solaces,
of that day, more powerful than all other urges, loomed the
pleasure of making money.

In the '30s the entire United States was "land mad." As
a contemporary wrote, "The farmer forsook the plow, and
became a speculator upon the surface of the soil. . . . The
mechanic laid aside his tools, and resolved to grow rich with-
out labor. The lawyer sold his books and invested the proceeds
in lands." A fictitious prosperity grew on a swollen system
of credit ; a snowstorm of notes of hand fell upon the country.
Paper money stuffed the vaults. Inevitably the new community
of Chicago shared in the insanity.

"In our case," wrote Joseph Balestier, quoted above, "the
inducements to speculation were particularly strong; and as
no fixed value could be assigned to property, so no price could
by any established standard be deemed extravagant."

Moreover, Chicago had something to speculate with — the
Illinois and Michigan Canal. In 1827 the State of Illinois had
been authorized by Congress to accept "each alternate section
of land, five miles in width, on each side of the proposed canal,"
and the State, selling this land, saw a straggling procession
of cities and towns rise along the right of way. Chicago itself
had been laid out in 1830 — three-eighths of a mile square —
and had streets marked off, although these were indistinguish-
able in the irmd.

Now, in the later 530s, "canal lands" became a speculative
will-o'-the-wisp, "School lands" were footballs for the gamblers,
too* Chicago, like every other town in the county, contained
a section set aside for "educational purposes," but with unusual
recklessness, even for a Western town, in 1833 Chicago sold
this section — worth hundreds of millions today — for $38,865*

Through 1835 and '86 the boom held its crest Land on
Lake Street, west of State, selling for $300 in 1834, was resold

for $60,000 two years later. Another tract knocked down for
$62 at an auction in 1830 increased until it sold for $96,700
in 1836. The lot on which was to arise the Tremont Hotel was
said to have been "swapped for a pair of ponies and rebought
for a barrel of whiskey." Col. Walter L. Newberry made
smashing profits, founding a fortune which later went, in part,
to establish a magnificent library.

"Hardy pioneers," Chicago has always liked to call these
men of the early '80s. "Sharpers of every degree; pedlars,
grog-sellers, horse-dealers, horse-stealers . . . rogues of every
description, white, black, brown and red „ . * half-breeds,
quarter-breeds, and men of no breed at all," was the way a
supercilious English traveler, Charles J. Latrobe, described
them to Londoners when he had returned from his rambles in
North America.

"The little village was in an uproar from morning to night,
and from night to morning; for, during the hours of darkness,
when the housed portion of the population of Chicago strove
to obtain repose in the crowded plank edifices of the village,
the Indians howled, sang, wept, yelled in their various encamp-
ments. With all this, the whites seemed to me more pagan than
the red men . . . betting and gambling were the order of the
day. Within the vile, two-storied barrack, which, dignified as
usual with the title Hotel, afforded us quarter, all was in a
state of most appalling confusion, filth and racket."

The "land craze" had brought professional adventurers* yet
the whole affair was of so adventurous a character that to
strange eyes the honest men seemed no different from the
scoundrels. Gamblers nested plentifully, not to be driven away,
even temporarily, until a "season of prayer," held by the godly
wing of the inhabitants in 1835, won many young men from
the devil and sent two gamblers to jail. A town ordinance was
passed that year assessing a $£5 fine against keepers of houses
of prostitution.

To add to the booming fury of land speculation, the gov-
ernment itself got into the game that same year. On Lake
34

Street, the business thoroughfare, it opened a land office where
vacant property was offered at $1.25 an acre. The office was
on a second floor over a store, and so thick were the buyers that
the thoughtful store-keeper each morning dumped loads of
sand onto the mud in front of the door*

Into such a turmoil came young William B. Ogden, who had
expected to be a big man in Eastern politics, but whose rela-
tives, entangled in Chicago real estate, now propelled him
Westward. One of Ogden's kinsmen had bought $100,000
worth of Chicago land "sight unseen" and had sent the young
man out to appraise it. As Ogden stood on State Street, look-
ing West at the vast acreage ankle-deep in water, he shook his
head. "You have been guilty of the grossest folly," he wrote
back to the buyer.

Nevertheless, he went doggedly to work platting the land,
and when Summer had dried the prairie, he auctioned off one-
third of the tract for the original $100,000. Watching the pur-
chasers storm his office, he put them all down as lunatics.
"There is no such value In the land and won't be for a genera-
tion," he said, as he took the money East to his kinsman.

Soon Ogden was back and learning how wrong he could be,
for here were those lunatic buyers of his kinsman's land stag-
gering now with riches. Convinced at last of Chicago's future
greatness, he made the place his home, building, within a few
years, a house that impressed Chicago as a palace, placing
it north of the river in the center of an entire "square" of city
land. Ogden's business was real estate, his avocations those of
a man of leisure, and to his "mansion" came celebrities who
passed through the city, Webster, Bryant, Emerson, Margaret
Fuller, many others. His friend G. P, A. Healy, the portrait
artist, declaimed Ogden to be a rival as a conversationalist of
the three best he had ever known — Louis Philippe, John
Quincy Adams and Dr. O, A. Bronson.

What served the city better was Ogden's incessant talk of
"Chicago's future." Seeing clearly what prosperity must come
to a town so strategically located, Ogden urged people to buy
its land on long terms, short terms, any terms at all. Stead-
fastly he kept at it long after the boom of 1835-1836 had col-
lapsed.

In 1836 there seemed sound reason for optimism. The long-
discussed canal project, authorized by Congress in 1827,
(thanks to the efforts of Daniel P. Cook, Illinois Congressman
— he for whom Cook County is named) , and made more def-
inite nine years later when the Legislature — urged on by
Gurdon Hubbard, largely — decided on the Chicago River as
the lakeward end, had now come to seem real On the Fourth
of July the citizens in gala mood embarked on ships in the
river and went up to Bridgeport — with large delegations on
shore paralleling their path in carriages, on horseback or
afoot. There the Canal was dedicated, and its work inaugu-
rated ; Chicago came home walking on thin air,

A year later the canal itself was thin air, too, for every-
thing had crashed, head on, into the banking-panic of 18S7,
All balloons collapsed, especially the land bubble, and Chicago
lots which yesterday had looked like fortunes now looked like
the sandy swindles that they were. Money disappeared. Men
went about with I.O.U.s for money. Commerce was conducted
with tickets reading, "Good at our store for ten cents," "Good
for a shave," "Good for a drink/* and so on, John Wentworth
vouched for this, as he did for the story that a erowd of small
boys filled a church collection-box with the "Good-for-a-clrmk**
tickets, and gave the deacon an opportunity to cash them at
the bar of issue.

The first sign that the Easterners would dominate Chicago
came on the first Tuesday in May, 1887* Two months earlier
it had demanded and obtained a city charter from the Legisk*
36

ture at Vandalia, adopting the motto, "Urbs in Horto" — a
city set in a garden.

John H. Kinzie, Whig, son of that first John Kinzie, one of
the "old-line" families who had trafficked with the Indians and
run the town ever since, ran for mayor against the rich young
man, William B. Ogden. Kinzie lost two to one.

A new spirit was on the town. The easy-living, love-making
Canadians were going as had their friends the Indians, pushed
on by the "restless, often reckless, Yankees." They understood
business, these Eastern newcomers — business and credit.

The town might be "broke," but it would come through the
-panic in far better shape than the State of Illinois. Young
Mayor Ogden, confronted by the fact that the city bought
thirty times as much goods as it sold, was also faced by the
situation down-state. Illinois itself had gone bankrupt over a
ten-million-dollar internal-improvement scheme — a bubble in
which Representative Abraham Lincoln had held devout faith.

Mayor Ogden, himself near to bankruptcy, kept Chicago
from following Illinois into shame. Before a town meeting he
spoke of how forts had been saved by the pure courage of
their garrisons and nothing more. To Chicagoans who urged a
moratorium on all debts, Ogden replied in appeals to civic
patriotism.

"Above all," he cried, "do not tarnish the honor of our
infant city !"

His personality, plus the support of the cooler business men
among his followers, won the day. The city issued scrip — a
thing bad enough, but better than bankruptcy. Its bankers,
led by the hard-fighting George Smith, issued certificates
against deposit and, as they backed them with honest vigor,
soon had them circulating at face value. If the State's legal
tender was worthless, Chicagoans would issue illegal tender and
pay their bills. The plan worked, and the city's commercial
credit was dramatized for the country at large to note.

Climbing slowly toward the civilization of later years,

Chicago passed on to the ambitious '40s, its wings clipped but
its organism undamaged.

However, the memory of that chaotic deflation of ?37 hung
on. Rising in the Saloon Building — the city's finest — one eve-
ning, a romantic speaker predicted that children then born
would live to see Chicago with a population of 50,000.

In answer there came from the audience a derisive shout:

"Town lots!"

CHAPTER V

is THE *40s dawned, four thousand, four hundred and sev-
enty Inhabitants sat along Garlic Creek, better called the
Chicago River, wondering if they had been right in calling
their town "The Garden City," or whether it was only a "mud-
hole in the prairie," as other cities jeeringly described it,

Maybe it was just another mushroom town after all, they
said to themselves; maybe that thrilling rise from nothing in
1815 to the lusty young giant of 1836 had been only a false
promise.

For three years now everything had stood still — the popu-
lation increasing only three hundred. Land speculators had
fled, the seven hotels stood almost deserted. The seven churches
— none of which had steeples — had dismally small attendance.
Palsy lay on the provision-stores, hardware-stores, drug-stores
and groceries which, in the absense of licensed saloons, sold
whiskey. The seventeen lawyers5 offices had little to do. The
municipal court in the courthouse was sleepy, the jail nearly
empty. The factories which made plows, wagons, lumber, and
bricks for the farmers, hummed and pounded at a slower pace.
The slaughter-houses, tanneries, and soap-and-candle works
did just enough to preserve their reputation for filling the
river with bad smells. Citizens who had been ruined in the

smash had gone to farming on the prairie. Pigs reveled in the
puddles on every street.

"The population of Chicago is said to be principally com-
posed of dogs and loafers," sneered the newspaper at Jackson,
Michigan.

Cows spent the night on sidewalks. The city's three con-
stables, who alone seemed busy, dashed about quelling fights in
saloons and on the streets, or they scurried out to shoo pigs and
chickens out of thoroughfares when citizens complained. Horse-
thieves were abundant. Chicago was known as wicked.

John Hawkins, father of the "Washingtonian" temperance
movement, visiting Chicago, said that after having carefully
looked the city over, he could frankly state that in all his tours
of the United States he had never seen a town which seemed
so like the universal grog-shop as did Chicago.

Fires frequently swept through the flimsy buildings, once
wiping out as many as eighteen structures at one lick.

To escape the nauseous river-water, the town pumped its
supply from the lake through logs bored lengthwise and strung
together from a common cistern. When the waves were high,
the common people drank muddy water, wealthier citizens buy-
ing from water carts at five to ten cents a barrel,

Nevertheless, in this doldrums which held the masses that
spirit which was to be Chicago's genius stirred, Thirty-eight
bags of wheat had been shipped on an East-bound boat in *38*
One hundred and twenty-seven steamboats with $41 lesser
vessels had called in that year. Grain was coming in from the
Northwest; 212 bushels were shipped in 1841, and in the year
following, 586,907!

Exporters began to blaze the way for the wholesalers who
would make the city great.

If, between '37 and '41, Chicago found it difficult to keep Its
head above water financially, it found the thing almost as hard
40

in reality, for the swamps and the mud hurt Chicago most of
all. Farmers' wagons mired down in the streets and were often
deserted. Ladies went to church in vehicles drawn by straining
horses ; sometimes they rode in dung-carts with buffalo robes
to sit upon. Sometimes girls and their beaux, returning from
parties late in the evening, stuck in the morass while crossing
streets, and had to howl for the neighbors to come pull them
out.

Roads leading into Chicago clutched at wagon-wheels with
black, tenacious fingers. Only after mid-Summer and through
early Autumn was the prairie's surface like an open palm.
In most months, stages struggled along hub-deep, churning the
pikes into quagmires. Passengers often chose to alight and
wade rather than put up with the jolting, bruising lurches of
the vehicles. Broken axles dotted the roadsides.

Still the immigrants came, national "panic" or no national
"panic." Nothing could stop the "horizon-hunger" which
gnawed at the natives of the Eastern States. In 183!< there had
been counted two hundred and fifty wagons a day streaming
out of Buffalo on the road to Chicago and the great North-
west, and the tide kept flowing through the following decade.

However, these covered wagons saw in Chicago only an out-
fitting point. Northern Illinois, Wisconsin, and the fringes of
Iowa and Minnesota were dotted with pioneers who had gone
through muddy Chicago swearing that they wouldn't take a
quarter-section of it as a gift.

At Michigan City, on the State line between Illinois and
Indiana, immigrant wagons and Detroit stages heading West
turned off onto Lake Michigan's beach, where if the waves
had been up, their wheels rolled on hard sand, making the
sixty-odd miles to Chicago in six hours. If, however, the waves
had been quiet and the sun hot for days, the wagon-wheels sank
in powdered sand, and the trip often took six days. In time
travelers gave up this route and bucked the muddy road just
inland — the road that seventy-five years later was to be the
nationally famous "Dunes Hiway."

Chicago, the city, lay in a semicircle of bogs and marshes.
A huge "Dismal Swamp" cut it off from the interior for
months. Spring held late ; Summer rains melted the land.

An English tourist, J. S. Buckingham, coming by stage
ninety-six miles from Peru to Chicago in 1842, found that the
trip consumed forty hours, six of them spent on the last twelve
miles of the way. "The horses walked at the rate of two miles
an hour," he said, "with the wheels scarcely ever less than six
inches and oftener a foot deep in mud and water. Altogether,
this last night was by far the most disagreeable that we have
ever spent in journeying through the United States."

Nature was a wet blanket on the city. By contrast it helped
lake traffic. Foreign immigrants, having passed over three
thousand miles of the Atlantic, chose to come the next thousand
by water also. They disliked mud. Across the Erie Canal to
Buffalo and then by steamer to Chicago was their path. They
had read and heard of Chicago, the city of promise. What met
their eyes was ramshackle, and drab. Chicago's dreadful wet-
ness dampened their spirits and sent them on to settle in the
more cheerful communities, along the canal at which workmen
tinkered spasmodically. It was land that most of these Euro-
peans wanted anyway — land, not a job, even if Chicago had
had jobs to offer. They would work on the canal until they got
money for the proper outfitting of a farm.

In *4& the funds for the canal gave out and work stopped.
Lawyers and merchants in the towns that had sprung up
along the promised waterway turned to farming now of neces-
sity— either that or they came back into Chicago*

There they found the "panic" wearing itself out. Chicago
was brightening. Its only civic improvement in the past four
years might have been nothing more than a cemetery, laid out
two miles north of town, but the city itself in *4$ was extraordl*
narily alive. William B. Ogden, resolutely "booming" ahead*
was refinancing the canal, showing its possibilities to London
financiers as they walked along its proposed banks* Immigr a*-
tion from the East swelled, By 1843 the city*s population was
48

7,580 ; most of its citizens were scheming how to get the trade
of the farmers of the Northwest, Those covered-wagon men who
passed through Chicago, scorning it as a swamp-mirage, now
needed supplies as well as markets for their produce.

In counties along the canal were seventy thousand settlers ;
within a radius of sixty miles of the city lived fifty thousand
souls. Only the mud kept them from trading lavishly with
Chicago. As it was, the farmers grazed their hogs and cattle
up through the marshes and down the pig-wallow streets to the
slaughter-houses of the city. In 1844 butchers had covered the
meat-demand of the town and were packing pork and beef
for export. Chicago had caught a gleam of its future.

But to get hold of the corn, wheat, oats and barley of the
region was a different matter. For heavy grain-wagons, roads
were impassable much of the year. Mud held the farmers back
in the Spring, early Summer, late Fall and Winter. Only those
hickory-muscled Hoosiers from the banks of the Wabash far
away risked Chicago journeys the year 'round. With their
wagons crammed with fruit and vegetables, fresh and dried,
bells on their horses, red apples dangling on strings along the
canvas facades, these pioneers, half-gypsy, laughed at the
mud. Practical farmers, with their bulkier loads, could not
follow them in any volume.

Even if it could not capture this rich and growing trade,
Chicago felt better just to know that it was in the center of
a prosperous region. In ?45 the city capered a little, instituting
May Bay and crowning a queen. Society perked up. New
Year's calls were made. Circuses came to town, and a few
theatrical companies* A public building was erected. Poor
though it was, the city had money enough to subscribe several
thousand dollars for the relief of the Irish immigrants who
came streaming in, eager to escape the potato-famine which
had stricken their island home. Rush Medical College, first
west of Cincinnati and Lexington, had gone tip in 1844.

Garlic Creek stunk to the heavens, which now seemed not
quite so far away.

CHAPTER VI

X. HE ambitions of four men were converging upon Chicago
in 1846 — four men whose visions were to shape the coming
metropolis.

John Wentworth, eccentric politician, Gargantuan editor of
the Chicago Democrat, job-printer capable of turning out vast
numbers of emergency campaign-posters for Stephen A«
Douglas with his own long arms while the "Little Giant" inked
the presses — "Long John," scheming now to force the United
States of America to turn from its faith in the all-powerful
South and think of the limitless future of the great Northwest
and of Chicago, destined ruler of the prairies.

Cyrus H. McCormick, blacksmith-inventor down in Virginia,
dreaming of Chicago as the home of his new-fangled reaper,
which the South would not accept, but which would some day
whirr on every Western farm,

William B. Ogden, aforementioned, the city's wealthiest
man, figuring on how to get the canal open and how to get a
railroad west of Lake Michigan,

John Stephen Wright, editor of a farm weekly, but busier
with visions of Chicago, the paradise-to-be for realtors*

Four men, three dying rich, one dying poor, yet all accom*
plishing their aspirations most aa&azingly* (The poor mau
44

loved Chicago's success more than his own purse.) So prodi-
giously were they laboring in 1846 that success would come to
them in two short years.

Within that very year Wentworth had focused America's
attention upon Chicago as a great "convention city/' McCor-
mick before '47 was past had made the farmers think of
Chicago as the commercial center of the land. Ogden by '48
would have the canal open and in addition a railroad financed,
first step in the era which was to make Chicago Chicago.
Wright, press-agenting the city as no city had ever been
advertised to the world before, was booming its property mag-
nificently, incidentally inventing the great school of "civic
boosting" — John Stephen Wright, remember the name, great
grandfather to all the boosters and boomers, Rotarians, Ki-
wanians, Lions and the rest who would in time become so
striking an American phenomenon.

Long John Wentworth as Congressman from the Chicago
district and editor of the best-known paper in the Northwest
had that section's ear. Also he had its eye, for Wisconsin, to
the North, hearing the big noise that was being made over
Chicago's future, decided to kidnap him and his city away
from Illinois. Wisconsin was aspiring to statehood and needed
the population of Northern Illinois to make its quota, so it
sent politicians down with offers that the section return to its
original home. Chicago, it was recalled, had originally be-
longed to Wisconsin, before Nathaniel Pope annexed it to
Illinois so that the Union might be forever free against any
possible secession by one of its sections.

Emissaries whispered flattering bribes to Long John and to
Ms fellow-Congressman, Joseph Hoge of Galena. "Throw your
influence to the change and Wisconsin will elect you two as its
first United States Senators," they said. "Also, you can pick
Wisconsin's first governor-" Propaganda filled the newspapers.

The two Congressmen, however, would rather be Illinoisians
than Senators, and, after deep consideration, Northern Illinois
followed them, saying "No" to Wisconsin.

In 1846, that same year of the attempted "theft of Chicago,"
Nathaniel Pope's foresight was dramatically recalled in still
another field, also by Long John.

James Polk, President of the United States, vetoed a bill
which would have improved rivers and harbors of the West
and Northwest. He could give it scant attention, busy as he
was with his task of tearing Texas away from Mexico and
adding it to the Southern "slave" States. To the "free" States
of the North and West, the Mexican War had been distasteful,
smacking too much of a "pro-slavery grab" and when on top
of their injury Polk, a North Carolinian, added the insult of
vetoing their harbor-improvement bill, political revolution
was born.

Of the nation's fifty-seven years, thirty-seven had been spent
under Southern Presidents, twelve under Northern execu-
tives and eight under that Westerner from Tennessee, Andrew
Jackson. Now in 1846 the South would hear the voice of
the Northwest for the first time. Long John, brash newcomer,
was barging his way around Congress, demanding that the
Northwest be treated not as an empty province on the fringe
of civilization but as a great section already mighty in popu-
lation.

This was a new thought to the East, also to much of the
Ohio River and the Mississippi River country* Those sections
had expected Chicago and the Northwest to find a modest fu-
ture by way of the South, employing the "Father of Waters***
The Illinois and Michigan Canal, if it was ever opened, would
merely give St. Louis an outlet to the Great Lakes and the
East, it was commonly said. If any Northwest town could be-
come important, it would not be Chicago, but Galena, the rich
lead-mining town of Illinois on the upper Mississippi, Illinois
itself had even sent its first good road f roiB Springfield to St.
46

Louis. New Orleans as a trading-center was, in 1846, closer
than Chicago to most Illinois towns.

But Long John knew people and politics. He knew that
Northern Illinois, which had held only one-fifth of the State's
population in 1830, held one-half in 1846. He knew that this
half was "Yankee," thanks to the port of Chicago. So he had
been organizing the Northwest, playing, too, upon the wounded
feelings of the Mississippi River folk ; Polk had snubbed them
also. Mass-meetings were held all over the North and West
and delegates were elected to meet in Chicago the following
Summer, when the anti-Southern sentiment would come to a
focus in the River and Harbor Convention.

"The same spirit and energy that forced emancipation of the
whole country from Great Britain will throw off the Southern
yoke," thundered the Chicago Journal, which had been founded
two years before, "The North and the West will look to and
take care of their own interests henceforth. . . . The fiat has
gone forth — Southern rule is at an end."

Wentworth's plan came to a gigantic climax on July 5,
1847, when three thousand delegates, hailing from eighteen of
the twenty-nine States in the Union, assembled in a huge tent
which Chicago had erected on the public square between Wash-
ington and Randolph Streets West of Michigan Avenue.
Twenty thousand people, more than the total population of
the town, were on the streets. A spectacular military parade
opened the festivities, floats bounced along over the rough
streets, one display being that of a ship with sails set. Bands
blared, fire companies, clubs, societies, city officials, paraded.
The affair was non-partisan, Northern Democrats and Whigs
marching together — first hint, perhaps, of the amalgamation
which would weld Northerners of all political faiths into a new
Northern party in 1856. Abraham Lincoln, who would lead
that amalgamation 111 1860, was at the River and Harbor Con-

vention, inconspicuous, however, for anything but his height.
Bigger in Chicago's eyes were Erastus Corning, president of
the New York Central Railroad, Horace Greeley, whose New
Tori; Tribune was the Bible of the Western farmers on sub-
jects from lunar eclipses to Presidential elections, Thurlow
Weed, Albany editor and powerful New York "boss," Tom
Corwin, Senator from Ohio, entertainer de luxe, wit and sar-
castic flayer of President Polk, Edward Bates, the anti-slavery
Missourian whose speech for Western rights would captivate
the convention crowd and make him the rival of Lincoln for the
Republican Presidential nomination thirteen years thereafter.

Eastern newspapers, overlooking Chicago's ramshackle as-
pects, caught the spirit of the city's vitality. Thurlow Weed
wrote back to his Albany Journal, "In ten years Chicago will
be as big as Albany. On the shores of this lake is a vast country
that will in fifty years support one hundred and twenty-five
thousand inhabitants."

It was sad that an affair so thrilling — first of the city's
endless conventions — should bring no commensurate political
results. James Polk and his Southern Congress paid no heed
to the demands and resolutions of the meeting. Nothing had
been benefited except Chicago. That muddy town of sixteen
thousand people had been advertised to the nation as a place
with a future. The bigwigs of the East had all remarked how
quickly and comfortably one could get there by canal and lake ;
they had seen a canal about to be opened, had heard of a, rail-
road about to be built, they had seen flimsy hotels packed and
jammed, people crowding, money changing, and most of them
had ridden out of town a little way to look at the prairie sweep-
ing like a sea to the horizon.

"Deep furrows may be laid for thirty miles without striking
a root, a pebble, or a log," wrote James Parton, the historian,
in the august Atlantic Monthly. "The absence of all dark
objects such as woods, roads, rocks, hills, and fences, gives the
visitor the feeling that never before in all his life was he com-
pletely out of doors*"
48

The Northwest was coming into its own, and the Eastern
bankers were beginning to wonder if investments out that way
might not some day be wise after all.

While Long John was organizing the Northwestern revolt
against the South, Cyrus H. McCormick of Virginia was in his
smithy, packing up some of his unsuccessful farm-machinery
inventions for removal to Chicago. At thirty-eight years of
age — old as whiskered men went in that day — he had heard
the Northwest call. Eighteen years before he had invented two
ploughs for farmers, fighting a losing battle, however, against
the rustic superstition that iron poisoned the soil. He had in-
vented a grain reaper, too, one different from and more suc-
cessful than that upon which his father had tinkered. And
although McCormick pleaded with Virginia farmers to adopt
it across thirteen long years, they refused.

Suddenly in 1844 there came to the tiny factory on the farm
orders for seven reapers — orders from the West. Pioneers in
Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa, having heard rumors of the labor-
saving invention, would take a chance with it. McCormick
hauled the seven machines to Richmond and sent them by boat
around the Atlantic to New Orleans, thence by steamer up the
Mississippi to Cincinnati, whence, by smaller boats and wagons,
they came eventually to their purchasers. Four of the seven
arrived too late for the harvest.

McCormick saw clearly where his future lay. The West was
to be the granary of the nation, and as he visited it in 1845
he saw that the Northwest was his opportunity. There he be-
held vast fields of wheat rattling onto the ground because there
were not enough hands to gather it. He saw laborless farmers
turn hogs and cattle into their standing crops. In Illinois he
saw men, women, and children frantically cutting wheat by
the light of the moon in order that the State's five million
bushels might be saved before it shattered, overripe.

Since the wheat harvest rarely lasted over a week and usually
not over four days, everything depended upon the speed with
which it was cut. So McCormick decided to build his reaper-
works in the heart of the wheat country, where he could deliver
machines with rapidity.

He looked the West over for a site. He looked at Cleveland,
Milwaukee, Cincinnati, and St. Louis, all more prosperous
than Chicago. Of all cities that he visited, his biographers say
Chicago was "unquestionably the ugliest and youngest." Yet
for all its mud and shabbiness McCormick saw that Chicago
was the place. Here he could best assemble his materials^ his
steel from England, his pig iron from Scotland and Pitts-
burgh, his white ash from the forests of the Northwest, The
boats that were at hand, and the railroads which the "boosters"
said were sure to come, would give him distribution. The feel
of a portentous future was in the town.

So in '47 McCormick arrived, bag and baggage, minus
money but full of hope. In search of help he bolted right up
to Chicago's most prominent citizen, William B. Ogden. That
dynamo of energy, for all that he was up to his ears in dreams
of railroads, promptly financed the new reaper-man. The ges-
ture was characteristic both of him and of Chicago — a sample
of the swift decisions that were to rocket the city upward with
a display and speed unapproached elsewhere in American
history.

Ogden, whose real estate speculations had made him the
town's richest man, laid down $25,000, and received a half-
interest in the new reaper-works — and McCormick was off on
his dazzling career* With all speed the largest factory in
Chicago was erected, and soon reapers were going by wagons
and canal boats and steamers to the farmers.

Not only did McCormick revolutionize farming, he revolu-
tionized business in general The first was almost immediate* the
second took longer ; nevertheless, the effect of its example was
quickly felt in other Chicago industries*

Up to the advent of McCormick, business had been con-
50

ducted upon the principle of "Let the buyer beware." Sellers
got what they could for their products ; trading was a matter
of sharp wits, haggling a necessity, often a sport. If the pur-
chase was not what it had been cracked up to be, so much the
worse for the buyer.

In New York the foremost merchant, A. T. Stewart, was
trying to break away from the practice ajid fix known prices,
but considering the greater scope of McCormick's activities it
must be said that out of Chicago, the wicked, boastful city,
came the first guarantee on merchandise and the first stand-
ardization of price. McCormick, who had never been a business
man or a trader, only a poor, dreaming inventor, discarded
all the rules — or rather lack of rules — of business. He wanted
to sell his reapers. He had no money with which to advertise
extensively, Every reaper must advertise its fellows. He
thought only of getting his reaper liked. So he sold each at
an established price — $120 — "take it or leave it,55 no haggling.
A farmer paid $30 down and $90 more in six months if he
could make it; if not, McCormick gave him more time. Never
did the "Reaper-King" sue a farmer for money. He knew how
farmers dreaded lawyers and their sharp ways, and how well
they liked a creditor who was sympathetic enough to wait for
his money until capricious Nature had brought in good crops.
Incredibly little money did McCormick ever lose by this plan,
although it was ruinous, in the eyes of old-fashioned business
men, for the inventor to borrow money to make reapers, bor-
row more money to ship them, and in return receive so little.

"He's holding the bag for the farmers," they said, prophesy-
ing his speedy doom.

But McCormick had fastened his wagon to the star of the
Northwest* As the region filled, his factory multiplied itself.

One farmer told another farmer of McCormick's guarantee.
Each reaper carried with it an iron-clad guarantee to be per-
fect, to scatter grain less than had the old cradle and scythe,
to permit the easy raking of cut grain off its platform, and to
mow down one and a half acres an hour — more than ten men

could accomplish before. Farmers gladly gave McCormick tes-
timonials such as, "My reaper has more than paid for itself
in one harvest."

These endorsements McCormick broadcast across the North-
west. From his boyhood he had believed in advertising. Now
he had the money with which to make good his faith. Hand-
bills, letters, newspapers, bore his story.

When the gold fever struck the nation in >49, sending those
Homeric covered wagons to California, ten thousand people
went from Illinois alone, and McCormick warned the farmers
to buy reapers quickly ; labor would be scarce, he said, one man
must do the work of absent hands — get a reaper now. They did.

He sent agents everywhere and risked the erection of ware-
houses across the country. By '49 he had nineteen assembling-
plants in the Mississippi valley and the Northwest. Farmers,
he knew, were slow to make up their minds, and would put off
purchasing the desired reaper until the last minute* Then it
would be too late to obtain reapers from Chicago in time for
the harvest. From a regional warehouse the machine could be
rolled out at almost a moment's notice. Agents, surging every-
where, found immigrants as ready as native Americans to try
the reaper. They might not understand English, but they
understood an easier way of doing work when they saw it.

To defeat his competitors, who were many, McCormick in-
stituted "Field Day" — a sort of fair at which all makes of
reapers vied with each other in a chosen wheat field* Crowds
would gather. Steers or sheep would be barbecued, the reapers
would roll out and cut their swaths to ringing cheers. Judges
would time them, note the amount cut and how much the grain
was tangled. Usually McCormick won. If he had not been
sure of victory he would never have agitated the contest. For
forty years "Field Day" was a great one for American fariBers*
Excesses at length killed it. Farmers, in the excitement of
making bets, drinking whiskey, and beholding such l&rge
crowds, would stampede the reaper-drivers into foolish dis-
plays, such as attempts to mow down groves of young saplings,
52

or to chain two reapers together and set them pulling in oppo-
site directions to see which would come apart first. Agents
would bring secretly reinforced machines to the contest for this
purpose. "Field Day" degenerated into maudlinity and was
abandoned.

The Illinois and Michigan Canal, at which the River and
Harbor delegates had looked as workmen brought it toward
completion, was ready in April, 1848, and on the sixteenth it
was opened with public rejoicing. Here after sixteen years of
discouraging toil, now on, now off, the city had its channel to
the warm Gulf of Mexico. True enough, the channel was not
what Chicago had dreamed, but it was of immeasurable prom-
ise, nevertheless. Originally the plan had been to cut through
the old Chicago portage and to lower the continental divide
sufficiently to allow steamships uninterrupted passage between
New Orleans, Chicago, and Buffalo. This "deep cut" project
had been abandoned, however, when State funds ran low, and
the canal builders had been forced to content themselves with
the "shallow cut" alternative. They had merely lowered the
watershed strip enough to allow flat freight barges to get
across from one lock to another and thus into ancient Garlic
Creek where the wharves waited with their wealth. The current
from the Des Plaines River was often insufficient to float even
craft as shallow as these, and in such times bucket-wheel pumps
lifted water into the canal from the Chicago River.

There was charm and color in the realization that, now,
the canal would bring rich Southern cargoes through the city.
Sixteen canal boats plied on that opening day, and a week
later the steamship General Thornton arrived from New
Orleans with sugar for Buffalo. The sugar was at its destina-
tion a good two weeks ahead of former running-time between
New Orleans and Buffalo by way of New York and the Erie
Canal.

Now the "boosters" and the "boomers" were legion. Wild

with elation, they paid no heed to the fact that for much
of the summer low water in the canal and the Illinois River held
back traffic — an ominous warning. That was only temporary,
it was said, and well forgotten by Autumn, when traffic was
immense, lumber, clothing, furniture, and hardware from the
lakes passing through to the interior and wheat, corn, sugar,
molasses, and coffee rushing up and on to the East, Side-wheel
steamers were disappearing from the Great Lakes, and faster,
bigger propeller-boats replacing them. By 1850 twenty of
these newcomers were plying regular schedules out of Chicago-
Swarms of schooners, brigs, side-wheelers, carried lesser car-
goes to and fro.

Sailors frolicked, sang and fought on the river-front and
in the "scarlet city" that grew up along the north bank of the
river* Farm boys and merchants from lower Illinois came to
the town, gaped at its stir and clangor and went home to tell
tall tales of the ships, the factories, the gamblers, and to
whisper to their fellows tormenting descriptions of the daugh-
ters of joy up in Chicago.

The city grew wickeder as the canal traffic added its tran-
sient masculines to the crowd. Young men came from the older
settlements of the midlands as well as from the East, some
halting in Chicago, more striking out for the canal-towns.
Soon they were hurrying home to get married and bring their
brides back to the new country. In 1850 the region along the
waterway from Chicago down to the center of the State held
1*70,000 people, a gain of 100,000 in ten years* Chicago itself
in the decade had jumped from 4,470 to $8,620. The northern
half of the State had grown in the same period from $09,000
to 459,000.

The canal, upon which $7,000,000 had been lavished across
the years of its slow gestation, was worth all it cost, even if
it never quite came up to expectations. Too often the rocks in
the Illinois River would be sticking their heads up above low
water to snag canal boats, and passenger traffic was apt to ba
uncertain due to such delays.
54

Nevertheless, tremendous tonnage went through in a year's
time. In 1851 most of the three million bushels of wheat re-
ceived by Chicago came from the Illinois River, Tolls more
than paid for the canal's upkeep and dividends of 12% per
cent, were paid in its first year.

But more exciting to the spirit of Chicago than all the
wealth that came flowing in, was the realization that the canal
was making St. Louis suffer. Chicago, the "Queen of the
Lakes," was conquering St. Louis, the "Queen of the River,"
The canal, which had been expected to boom St. Louis even
more than Chicago, was found to work in opposite manner.
In its first year it decreased St. Louis5 grain market 316,000
bushels of corn and 237,000 bushels of wheat, most of this loss
going to swell Chicago's gain. Lower Illinois turned its back
upon its quiet old friend, the river queen, and went traipsing
off after the lake siren.

However, the eclipse of St. Louis was coming not so much
from the smoke of the canal steamers heading North as from
the clouds that had begun to roll out from different engines —
locomotives,

It will be remembered that William B. Ogden, whose smooth
upper lip set rigidly above his firm chin-whiskers, had given
the hopeful inventor of the reaper $25,000 in 1847. In 1849
Ogden, already called by his admirers "the biggest all-around
man in the Northwest," wanted his money back. McCormick
gave it to him and $25,000 beside — 100 per cent, profit in two
years. Ogden's mind was on a greater dream — railroads.
Clearly he saw what steel fingers running westward would do
for Chicago and for himself. Back in '36 there had been talk
of a railroad from Galena, lead-mining town northwest on the
Mississippi River. The panic had killed such a project before
it could be born. Ten years later Ogden revived it, finding,
however, Chicago united against such a plan.

The city's merchants had siuce the '30s been absorbed in the

idea of capturing the farmers' trade with the "good roads55
bait. A turnpike had been built across the Dismal Swamp to
the southwest, but since it was only prairie soil graded up, it
was worse than the surrounding marsh in wet weather. So the
city, casting about for something new, adopted the idea which
New York State had borrowed from peasants on the Russian
steppes — "plank roads." Boards nailed to timber made "the
poor man's railroad." In 548 over 70,000 wagon-loads of pro-
duce rolled into town over the planking, an average of two
hundred a day. Charging 37% cents toll for a four-horse team,
25 cents for a single team and 12% cents for a man on horse-
back, the roads reaped wealth. By the end of the decade plank
roads ran like spokes into Chicago as the hub; men talking
about them as of a revolution.

Professional teamsters developed, tough itinerants, skilled
at crowding rivals into the mud, stealing chickens, and fright-
ening farm girls along the way. For them and for the seasonal
rush of farmers Chicago opened a camp on the lake shore,
where once Fort Dearborn had stood, and where later the
Illinois Central Railroad depot was to command the foot of
Randolph Street. Prostitutes tempted the countrymen in the
lantern-light. Gamblers cheated them. Pickpockets rifled them,
Newspapers warned them to be cautious as to whom they
shared beds with in the crowded hotels, Chicago's morals were
bad, but its business was good.

Merchants, therefore, fought the railroad suggestion of
Ogden, saying, "Chicago is a retail center, dependent on the
farmers who come to trade. If they can ship their produce on
a railroad they won't come to town. Villages, perhaps cities, will
spring up along the right of way and farmers will trade there,
nearer home. Grass will grow in the streets of Chicago if rail-
roads come/' Stagecoach^owners combined to fight the pro-
posed steam road.

Ogden, shrewdest of the shrewd, took Ms cause to the

farmers. They listened to his arguments, were convinced, and

financed the road. Farm wives took their savings from

the loose brick in the fireplace and bought Galena and Chicago
Railroad stock on the monthly installment plan. They were
doing it for the future of their children. Many buyers of stock
gave up their last $2.50 of cash as a payment down on one
share of stock. Quickly the $250,000 was promised. Bankers in
the East, whose brains were not so wise as the hearts of the
pioneer women of the West, sniffed at so wild a scheme as "a
mad railroad west of Lake Michigan." Ogden, flanked by J.
Young Scammon, another exponent of the new Chicago spirit,
kept at his work, rattling over Northern Illinois in buggies,
speaking at log schoolhouses, or campaigning among the
wagon-men in the camp at the foot of Randolph Street.

Still the small merchants of Chicago, sleeping on the door-
sill of what was to be America's most spectacular mart of pros-
perity, held the city's gates closed to the railroad. They de-
feated an ordinance which would allow the terminal within
city limits. Construction, however, went on so rapidly that by
November 20, 1848, the first train of second-hand cars behind
a second-hand engine ran over second-hand rails ten miles out
to the Des Plaines River with directors aboard^ and came back
with a load of wheat.

Chicago had become Chicago.

The Northwest peopled by the Northeast of the United
States, and the sons of cold Goths and fiery Celts of Northern
Europe, had turned to lift the city through which they had
come on their home-hunt. Unlike so many other pioneers, they
had not feared the railroads. Some among them had listened
to the cry, "The railroads are undemocratic, aristocratic insti-
tutions that will ride rough-shod over the people and grind
them to powder," but not many had bothered with such dreads.
Few of them repeated what older agriculturists had said, "The
railroads will scare our cows so bad they won't give down their
milk at night."

Chicago's retail-business men gasped when, a week after this
first railway inaugural, the news came down into town that
thirty loads of wheat were waiting at the Des Plaines River

terminal shed. Eastern bankers gaped when the first year's
report showed that the Galena and Chicago Union had earned
$2,000 a month. They gaped more when the second year's
figures revealed a profit of $9,000 a month.

Farmers' wives of Illinois had a new light in their eyes and
new promises for their children when they began receiving
twice a year dividends of 10 per cent., 12 per cent., 16 per cent.

The city, awake at last, opened its eyes to the road in '49
and a depot went up. Little merchants began to change from
retailers to wholesalers. Their chance had come to sell to the
Northwest, instead of to Chicagoans and the farmers who came
to town. Where they had dealt in hundreds they now saw that
they could deal in hundreds of thousands.

Ogden had won stupendously. By 1850 the road reached
Elgin forty miles away and in >54< Freeport, where it tapped
another railway, the Illinois Central, and passed over its tracks
into Galena.

The Illinois Central was the great road, Illinois* two Sena-
tors had fathered it, one the squat, dwarf-like Stephen A.
Douglas, the other the solemn Sidney Breese, who went about
in a cloud of long white hair and whiskers. For ten years
Breese had been dallying with the idea of a railroad from
Galena in the north to Cairo at the south. "Panics'* had inter-
fered. Now in the end of the decade, Douglas, the Little Giant,
changed the plan. The road should rim from Cairo to the Illi-
nois River, then branch to Galeaa — and Chicago! Douglas,
smartest of expansionists, was a master politician, incidentally
shrewd enough and eloquent enough to defeat upon occasion,
in Illinois, the shrewdest politician of them all, one Lincoln*

The Senators named this new road the Illinois Central, but
the common people, who saw through some things, promptly
nicknamed it the "St. Louis Cut-Off," understanding exactly
what such a steam line would do to the Queen of the River*
Seven hundred miles this proposed road must run* twice m long
58

as the longest railway then in America. With Douglas in
Washington, the Northwest had a spokesman indeed, and in
1851 Congress donated to Illinois 2,595,000 acres of land in
alternate sections in the State, also a strip of ground two hun-
dred feet wide down through its center for a right of way —
first of all railroad grants in the New World. Illinois ceded
all land to the new company in return for a promised 7 per
cent, of gross earnings.

No time was wasted. Seventeen million dollars was promptly
borrowed on the land ; materials, food, clothing, medicines, were
collected. Laborers, thousands of them newly arrived Irishmen,
swarmed in. Flatboats unloaded at points all along the river,
Teams clustered. The Eastern bankers were opening their
vaults for Western investments.

From the East another road was creeping toward Chicago,
the Michigan Southern, which had previously terminated at
Elkhart, Indiana, failing in its plan to reach St. Joseph,
Michigan. While it waited to finance its last lap, Chicago's
growth became apparent on the horizon, and, seeing what was
what, the road drove in this more promising direction. On
February 20, 1852, its first train steamed into the new city
while the fire-bells rang, cannon boomed and the citizens
cheered their heads off. The way to the East was open and
Chicagoans were shouting, "Merchants who used to spend
two weeks getting to New York can now make the trip in two
days."

Three months later the Michigan Central came into town
from the East, using the tracks of the Illinois Central for the
last fourteen miles of its route. This usage precipitated the
most tragic and comic of squabbles, for the Illinois Central
crossed the rails of the Michigan Southern at a point where
both companies claimed the right of way. Each road, haught-
ily ignoring the other, shot its trains across the intersection
without warnings or signals. The inevitable happened. Two
stubborn trains smashed in 1853 at Grand Crossing, and
eighteen corpses and forty maimed passengers were brought

into the city. Mobs gathered, city dignitaries spoke, and Chi-
cago thereafter made all trains come to a full stop at inter-
sections.

Before the close of that same year the Chicago, Rock Island
and Pacific had, after only a year's work, thrown down its
track from Chicago to Quincy on the Mississippi River. In
the nest year, 1854, the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul had
come down to the city from the north. The short lines that
were to form the nucleus for the Chicago and Northwestern
were combining in Wisconsin.

All at once, Chicago found itself the leading railroad center
of the United States. Six railroads in six years. The news of
it went everywhere. Immigrants came in greater droves. Young
men streamed in faster and faster. In 1852 the city had held
38,733 souls, and at the end of 1853 the city fathers counted
60,662, an increase of 60 per cent. It staggered belief, and
the curious poured in just to see the thing — many of them
remaining.

As necessary to Chicago as any of these business titans,
Wentworth, McCormick and Ogden, was the wordy, ecstatic
editor, John Stephen Wright, later to be forgotten by the
city. They were the sinews, but he was the voice of the town —
the ballyhooer, the advertiser, the herald, the "man of vision.'*

Before Wright's noisy advent, the United States had been
ignorant of the value of super-optimism in business* Such civic
virtues as a city owned were viewed with complacency and sat-
isfaction. St. Louis and Cincinnati, the great cities of the West,
were as dignified and as modest as Boston, Philadelphia,
Charleston, or New Orleans. Chicago of the early ?40s, stuck-
in-the-mud, ugly, ill-smelling, needed a press agent. He ap-
peared.

John Stephen Wright had come to Chicago in 1832 to clerk
in his father's log store, which catered to the one hundred and
fifty residents of the village. "Though a mere boy,** lie ad-
60

mitted afterward, "I became impressed with the advantages of
the point which was the western extremity of the great lake
navigation, and with a certainty of its connection, by canal,
with the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, and of its being the
natural commercial center of a country so fertile and so easily
tilled and so vast in extent. In the Winter of 1833 and 1834
I induced a wealthy uncle of mine to take some purchases
which I had made, expecting to share in the profits. He took
them, and has made out of those and other operations, through
me, several hundred thousand dollars, but all the benefit to
me either directly or indirectly has been $100. He came to
Chicago in the Spring of 1833, and the next day after his
arrival said if I would sell his lot — one of those which I had
bought about fifteen months previously for $3,500 — for
$15,000, he would give me one hundred dollars. I sold the lot
that day for cash, and the $100 was reckoned into my credit
in our final settlement in 1838."

At eighteen years of age Wright was a full-fledged "real-
tor," writing letters of radiant forecast back East and handling
deals with skill. By his twenty-first year he was worth over
$200,000, having made it wholly outside of office hours at his
f ather*$ store. At twenty-two he lost it all in the financial panic
of 1837, and with real estate lifeless in the mud all around
him, turned in 1840 to another pursuit — publishing. Found-
ing The Prairie Farmer, he sold it in the homes of the North-
west, traveling across the wilderness from farm to farm tak-
ing subscriptions, and talking interminably of the future of
Chicago. The more he talked, through the first five years of
his editorship, the more clearly he saw Chicago's destiny re-
vealed to him in the heavens, and in 1845 he was in Boston,
begging for funds with which to finance new realty ventures
In the Western Eldorado. With Illinois bankrupt, its bonds
worth only twenty cents on the dollar, and with Chicago fa-
mous only for its mushroom boom and subsequent lapse into
drab, frontier wickedness, Boston bankers thumbed Wright
down. Unconquerable, he switched his attack, submitting a

series of twenty articles to the Boston Commercial Advertiser
and the Evening Post. The august Boston editors printed
Wright's hosannahs. Soon the New York Commercial Ad-
vertiser was following suit.

"Though no one would see the future of the West and of
Chicago as I did, my own confidence had never been so strong,"
he said in recalling those days. "There was not the least con-
fidence in Chicago, it having been for ten years a synonym for
all that was wild and visionary . . . and after months of vain
attempts, I returned home."

Soon, however, he had hold of pieces of property here and
there and was off on a trail that within a decade made him
rich once more. Consecrated as he was to "boosting," he be-
came something of a "greeter," too, meeting newcomers with
words of welcome and optimism. Around the town he would
lead them, talking in warm enthusiasm of Growth and Prog-
ress and the Future, so that the stranger might forget the
mud that sucked at his boots and the stench that attacked his
nose. On one of these missions he encountered the man who
was to surpass him at "boosting" — William Bross, who de-
scribed the event.

"He (Wright) gave me a cordial welcome and a great deal
of valuable information. On Sabbath he called and took me
to church and embraced many opportunities to introduce me
to Mayor Woodworth and other leading citizens, giving me
a lesson in courtesy to strangers that I have never forgotten,"

Bross saw why the city was ridiculed over the country as
"the slab city."

"Stores and dwellings," he said, "were, with few exceptions,
built in the 'balloon9 fashion. Posts were placed in the ground
at the corners, and at proper distances between them blocks
were laid down singly or in cob-house fashion* On these foun-
dations were laid and to these were spiked, standing on end,
3x4 scantling. On these sheathboards were nailed, and weath-
erboards on the outside of them; and lath and plaster inside
with the roof completed the dwelling- or store. This cheap,
62

but for a new town, excellent mode of building, it was claimed,
was first introduced or invented in Chicago, and I believe the
claim to be true. Of course, fire made sad havoc with them at
times, but the loss was comparatively small and they were
quickly rebuilt. True, Chicago was ridiculed as a slab city;
but if not pleasant to bear, ridicule breaks no bones."

Considering how dismally Chicago faced Bross in '48, the
man's immediate recognition of the city's future seems remark-
able. Without a question he adopted Wright's rosy view of
things, although thirty years later, when age had cooled him
somewhat, he was more realistic, saying, "The streets [in 1848
before the advent of plank roads] were simply thrown up as
country roads. In the Spring for weeks at a time they would
be impassable. I have seen empty wagons and drays stuck on
Lake and Water Streets on every block between Wabash and
the river. Of course, there was little or no business doing, for
the people of the city could not get about much, and the people
of the country could not get in to do it. As the clerks had
nothing to do, they would exercise their wits by putting boards
from dry-goods boxes in the holes where the last dray was
dug out, with significant signs, like 'No Bottom Here/ 'The
Shortest Road to China.* In fact, there was no end to the
fun/'

So optimistic was Bross in '48 that he opened a book-store,
and when that was proved to have been too far ahead of its
time, he switched quickly to publishing— -a field for which he
was born. He found a kindred soul in J. Ambrose Wight, who
edited "Booster" Wright's Prairie Farmer and together the
two young men started printing that paper and a little later
took on a religious weekly, Herald of the Prairies.

Chicago's cause became a holy one to the three men, Bross,
Wight,, and Wright. It was all religious work, whether they
were pouring their civic hosannahs into the farm or church

weekly. Each was an ardent churchman: Wight was a clergy-
man and later would have a Presbyterian pastorate; Bross
was the son of an Eastern deacon and soon would have his own
nature hit off by the town in the nickname "Deacon." Wright
as a precocious New York State boy— he had studied Greek
at three years of age— had been raised by his mother to be a
preacher, and had, in his teens, deserted that calling for the
more worldly field of business. Business, however, and progress,
he saw through the eyes of an evangelistic promoter rather
than through the eyes of a self-seeker.

Wright, fevered, sincere, built a schoolhouse for Chicago
with his private funds. He wrote, spoke, and campaigned for
the first Illinois public school law, and as much as any man
was responsible for Chicago's free school system. In 1839 he
had headed the Chicago Colonization Society and in *47 had
fathered public parks.

At his own expense he distributed six thousand copies of a
petition which begged Congress to aid in laying a railroad
from both the upper and lower Mississippi regions to Chicago.
Stephen A. Douglas, toiling in Washington for the Illinois
Central grant, saw these signed petitions pour into the capital
by the thousands. They aided the cause mightily, he thought.

He was the pioneer "booster" of them all, John Stephen
Wright, making men laugh at his fantastic forecasts, going
"smash" himself again and again in the deflations which struck
his business, real estate. In a spasm of exuberance he once
started building a grain-reaper to rival McCormick's, but
either through his chronic inability to carry out his dreams or
in the national panic which struck the country just then, he
lost that venture, too. Unerringly he picked bargains in real
estate that would have made him a multimillionaire, could he
but have held them. He plunged on, orating, writing, publish-
ing his visions of what the city must become, and even when he
was coming to his end, a poor man, he was nevertheless crying
the immeasurable future of Chicago, seeing it as the only true
city of America and himself as its prophet*
64

CHAPTER VII

" Bross, whose eyes were blazing with civic zeal
under his shaggy eyebrows, had in '52 reached out for more
powerful "booster" weapons. Joining forces with John L.
Scripps, he had begun to publish the Democratic Press, which
they hoped to make a "good commercial and statistical paper
to the end that the world might be impressed with the present
and future of Chicago," By '54 he was issuing pamphlets of
such enthusiastic hosannahs that not only America but also
Europe was reading them. Everybody agreed that Bross5 beat-
ing of the tom-toms induced tens of thousands to seek Chicago
as a home for either themselves or their dollars.

"Prairie breezes are our source of energy," Bross cried in
1853. That year one in every sixty Chicagoans died, consump-
tion killing more than any other disease, although "teething"
ran It a close second. Two years later the city's death rate
would be higher than that of any other city in the country.

"Our lowness of land is an advantage," shouted John
Stephen Wright, Bross' fellow-booster, "Chicago does not
have to grade hills and fill valleys."

Meanwhile streets, alleys, and vacant lots reeked with filth.
The slops from houses were tossed into gutters for travelers to
smell and see. Michigan Avenue was spotted with manure

heaps. Cleanings of stables were piled on the lake front to
be washed into the water which the city drank. Cows still spent
the nights on the sidewalks,

"Men who paid $100 for lots in 1833 are selling them in
1853 for $60,000 to $70,000," exulted Bross. Houses that cost
$500 to put up were renting for $400 a year.

Since 1833, Chicago had been letting water currents, guided
by the pier erected in that season, eat away acres of lake front-
age, until the waves were biting at Michigan Avenue. In 1850
it had sold the Illinois Central its priceless land where Fort
Dearborn had stood and where the wagoners camped. For it,
Chicago had received $45,000. Now, in '52, it asked the Illi-
nois Central to have some more of Chicago, giving it the whole
late front from Randolph Street to Park Avenue in return
for a breakwater that would save the city. Property worth in-
credible millions was traded for a quicker realization of that
"Manifest Destiny" of which Bross was singing. The Illinois
Central spent $2,000,000 on the work, laid down its tracks,
and went on its way to create the suburban service that Chi-
cago was, no doubt justly, to call the greatest in the world.
The city had asked the railroad to help* It couldn't refuse.

"For fifteen years after it began its rapid increase, Chicago
was perhaps of all prairie towns, the most repulsive to every
human sense,35 said James Par ton, the historian.

"The city is seventeen years old,5* orated Bross in 1854, aand
it has a hundred and fifty-nine miles of sidewalks and twenty-
seven miles of planked streets, four miles of wharves, fifty-six
miles of sewers, ten bridges, gas-works and street-lamps.'* Well
might lie exult over such achievements, since both himself and
Editor Wright had annually campaigned for better paving*

As early as 1836, the city had tried to cover that slough
which lay west of Michigan Avenue well past State Street — a
slough in which, the frogs sang to the city, "Better go round,
better go round." The streets had been lowered and planks
put down, but the boards broke under heavy hauling and
slapped the horses in the face. "Water accumulates under the
66

planking, steams up through every crack of the rotting boards,
and poisons the town," said Wright. Cholera and smallpox
came every year. The level of the town wsfcs but two feet above
the river. Then the streets were graded up and dressed with
sand. Horses, wagons, and men still stuck fast. Cobble-stones
were tried, — they disappeared.

But that same copious historian Parton saw the spirit by
which Chicago was to pull itself out of the mud. The town
was full of simplicity, originality, and boldness, he thought.
"There are no men of leisure in Chicago. In all the Western
country, the richer a man is, the harder he toils. . . . Too-
respectable Bostonians, staid Philadelphians, self-indulgent
New Yorkers, acquired, after living in Chicago, a vivacity of
mind and interest in things around them, a public spirit, which
they did not acquire at home."

With such a population, Chicago caught hold of its own
boot-straps and yanked recklessly.

There was only one thing to do about the streets and that
was to raise them. Engineers said that they must come up
twelve feet. Twelve hundred acres must be filled. That meant,
of course, jacking up every building in town, too.

It was as preposterous as moving the city itself. Neverthe-
less, the thing was begun in 1855. The river was dredged and
at one swoop Chicago had a better channel for boats and tons
of dirt for the fills. New houses going up were built with cellars,
and the excavated dirt used for the elevations. It all took time,
and for ten years the sidewalks ran on erratic levels. In front of
one row of houses, pedestrians would walk high in the air, look-
ing down upon carriages and teams ; in front of another they
would be walking six feet lower. Between the various levels,
steps went up and down. The town was a giant jack-in-the-box,
with crowds popping up, scurrying, dropping down. The sight
was animated, dizzy, making the city appear even more hectic
than it was.

EHas Colbert, the Chicago historian, recalled how "it was
reported that when a genuine Chicagoan visited New York,

he found himself unable to walk on a level surface; he was
obliged to turn into an adjacent building every block or so
and run up and down a stairway for the sake of variety*"

Newspapers and magazines over the country laughed at
Chicago, but they wrote about it unendingly. The town was
universally felt to be bold, wild, amazingly strong, magnetic.

In all this hurly-burly appeared a man, more dynamic than
most, who would leave a record for gigantic achievements in
building sleeping-cars and in sharing dark labor-troubles with
his workmen. He came unheralded, an incoming New Yorker,
to the Tremont House, Chicago's skyscraper, four stories high.
The Tremont House at Lake and Clark was dejected. The
street had risen in front of it, giving it the appearance of hav-
ing sunk into the mud. Strangers wrote home that the big
hotel was settling into the bottomless swamp that underlay
Chicago. In reality, the proprietors of the Tremont House
saw no way in which to raise it, for it was of brick.

This New Yorker said that he could raise it, that he had
jacked up buildings along the Erie Canal, and that he could
lift this Chicago colossus without breaking a pane of glass or
keeping a single guest up at night.

"All right, go ahead," said the Tremont owners. "What's
your name?"

"George M. Pullman."

Quickly Pullman had twelve hundred men around five thou-
sand jackscrews in the basement. When the signal was given,
each man gave four jackscrews a half turn. Gently, surely, the
building went up inch by inch. Hotel life above went on, see-
ing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling nothing. Out-of-town
papers wrote about the thing as though it were a miracle*

Another giant had come to town.

In ?54< Chicagoans were proud of the new water-works which
had just been installed, reconciling themselves as far as pos-
sible to the fact that dead fish came through the pipes and
stuck in the faucets or splashed in bathtubs. Housewives might
fret somewhat when fish, boiled into a "nauseous" chowder,
made their hot-water reservoirs hideous, but it all meant prog-
ress, and pioneers were accustomed to unhealthful things, any-
way.

That summer a building "boom" began, more violent than
that of the '30s. Chicago's merchants were recovering from
the hysteria of fear that had gripped them when, at the open-
ing of the canal and the first railroads, retail trade had
slumped* Farmers no longer came to town in former numbers.
Direct sales crumbled. But by the middle fifties the storekeep-
ers saw immeasurably greater profits in wholesale trade and
began replacing residences with business property. Streets
were jammed with houses rolling out to the suburbs. Brick
and lumber heaped the downtown region and builders swarmed,
Wright, "the booster," was vindicated doubly, triply.

Subdividers splashed like beavers in the suburban swamps.
Real estate salesmen, not yet risen to the dignity of "realtors,"
hawked Chicago lots in every Eastern city, where eager buyers
crowded around maps of "Chicago additions," and laid out
their savings. Much of what they bought was still under water.
By '56 the city had expanded to eighteen square miles and its
property, which had in '52 been valued at ten millions of
dollars, had more than tripled in four years' time.

"In '53 Chicago shipped over six million bushels of grain, in
'54* nearly thirteen million, in '55 more than sixteen million,
and in '56 over twenty-one million," rejoiced the delirious Chi-
cagoans. The Soo canal at the north outlet of Lake Michigan
Had been opened in '55 and with the advent of steam power on
the Great Lakes had made Chicago a tremendous port. Since

1850 passenger steamers had been palatial. For the four-day
trip from Buffalo $10 was charged, and for that amount a
passenger got meals equal to those of the best hotels and music
in addition. Cabin passengers ranged from three hundred to
five hundred per steamer and immigrants were carried in "hun-
dreds," not so carefully numbered as the precious bags of
wheat.

Yet all this glory was passing. The railroads were killing
passenger-steamer trade of the lakes just as they were killing
the passenger-packet trade of the canal and the Illinois River.
Soon the lakes would see almost no boats but freighters, and
traffic on the canal was dwindling fast.

Loud rose the voice of the "boosters" repeating some ora-
tor's pronunciamento, "The iron horse that sipped his morn-
ing draught from the crystal waters of Lake Michigan can
slake his evening thirst upon the banks of the Mississippi
River."

Out-of-town papers, admitting all that, admitting that Chi-
cago was the railroad queen of the State that had built more
railroad mileage (2,235 in all) than any other commonwealth
of the Union, nevertheless spoke of the corruption and the
bribery that had been employed to bring the roads through
favored spots, and as for Chicago, that seat of Manifest Des-
tiny, to many an outside editor it was the "Gehenna of Abom-
inations."

"Chicago is the Greatest Primary Grain Port in the World,"
trumpeted "Deacon" Bross in ?55. "Chicago last year exported
12,000,000 bushels, New York 9,000,000, Archangel, 9,000-
000, Odessa 7,000,000. Chicago exceeded St. Louis by £50
per cent., Milwaukee 400 per cent.

"The world has never seen so much physical progress in so
short a period," he cried, pointing out that in 1855 &,93&
miles of completed track touched Chicago, ten trunk lines and
eleven branch lines coming to the metropolis. Four years ago,
he said, there were only ninety-five miles of track in Illinois,
Now there are $,410. Ninety-six trains a day are entering or
70

leaving Chicago. These roads have been built without Chicago
money. "All financing has come from the outside.5'

Passenger trains were averaging thirty miles an hour and
varying no more than ten minutes from schedule. One hour
before train time section hands cleared the track of cows.

Even Wright, the "booster," protested against the slaugh-
ter that was due to train wrecks. "They have killed nine peo-
ple in ten months, and injured 100 more," he said in 1854. He
said nothing of the cholera which killed 5.5 per cent, of the
city's population that year.

"Every element of prosperity and substantial greatness is
within Chicago's grasp," Bross told the world. "She fears no
rival, confident that her energy and enterprise, which have
heretofore marked her progress, will secure for her a proud
and preeminent position among her sister cities of the Union.
She has to wait but a few short years the sure development of
her Manifest Destiny."

As he said it, delegates from the whole Northwest were
heading for Chicago and the great Sabbath Convention. The
Puritan spirit, so strange a blend of progress and intolerance,
had begun to demand that the urge of "Manifest Destiny" lis-
ten to the voice of God. In convention it was demanded that
all these railroad trains quit desecrating the Sabbath. They
must not run on the Lord's Day. Chicago listened to them and
did nothing. But when they cried aloud that liquor drinking
be outlawed on Sundays, Chicago listened and acted. It was
one thing to move against the railroads and another to move
against the Germans.

Great groups of native-born Americans had been spoiling
to have at the "foreigners" for years. The "first people" of
Chicago were Puritans, who had inherited from their ancestors
the assurance that they were justly the social and moral men-
tors of the nation. They were orthodox Protestants by faith;
many of the immigrants were Catholics from Ireland. They

were conservative in politics; many of the newcomers were
"Forty-eighters" from Germany, radicals who had rebelled
against the tyrannies which aristocracy was heaping upon
them, and had sought freedom in America. How like the Amer-
ican Revolutionists they were was a thing that escaped many
of the grandsons of George Washington's ragged Continentals.

Partly because of hereditary prejudices and partly because
of a desire to have dramatic entertainment, which was scarce
m pioneer America, the native-born citizens organized a
"Know-Nothing" political party, which for a time concealed
even its name, and always hid its purposes in the cloak of
ritualistic secrecy. Vaguely it declared that it was out to pro-
tect "American institutions from the insidious wiles of for-
eigners," but in reality it was hitting at Roman Catholicism,
thereby overlooking the far better-grounded American Xnsti-
tutionalism of Thomas Jefferson and his Declaration of Inde-
pendence. Into it went even liberal men, who welcomed an
opportunity to avoid the slavery controversy which was ris-
ing to dominate the old Democratic and newly born Republi-
can parties. Only native Americans and those Protestants who
had been naturalized should rule the country, the Know-Noth-
ings said, and although Chicago's population in 555 was more
than half foreign-born, the "nativistic" ticket swept the city,
"Put none but Americans on guard/' was the slogan.

Extending its proscriptions outside the religious boundaries,
the new organization struck at the Chicago Germans, a ma-
jority of whom were Protestants. The temperance crusade of
that period had blended with Know-Nothingism and "native
American" Mayor Levi D. Boone obeyed its orders when he
raised the saloon-license fee from $50 to $300. This smashed
scores of small lager-beer saloons in the highly domestic Ger-
man and Scandinavian sections of the North Side, and a thun-
der of growls arose. Soon German-born leaders of unques-
tioned temperateness and respectability were speaking for
their kind. Irish, both calm and wild, met in stormy mass-
meetings of protest. Norse voices, like grating steel, were heard,
72

As the anger mounted, Mayor Boone suddenly brought out
from obscurity the village law forbidding the sale of intoxi-
cants on Sunday. He clapped it onto the quiet little German
beer gardens, but failed to fix it upon native-owned bars.
The "foreigners" rioted. Armed with shotguns, rifles, pistols,
clubs, knives, and bricks, they came down the river, cheering
for war. Their rights must be retrieved, even if it took blood.
In a mob they surged to the river in two detachments, the
first of which passed over the bridge. Before the second had
arrived Mayor Boone ordered the bridge-tender to "swing the
draw," and there the main body of the rioters stood, unable
to cross, howling their disappointment. When Boone had his
policemen in line across Clark Street, he ordered the bridge
swung back to let the rioters come across.

"Shoot the police !" rang the orders. "Pick out the stars." A
rebel blew off a policeman's arm with both barrels of his shot-
gun. Another officer killed the German. A fusillade began, clubs
popped on heads, the fight was general, although when the
rioters retreated only one corpse could be found on both sides.

The mayor planted cannon around City Hall and waited.
But the storm had passed. From the great body of native citi-
zens came a wave of reaction against Know-Nothingism and
prohibition. The new administration was "liberal."

To the roaring frontier city in 1855 there comes a certain
Kentuckian with a black slouch hat on his massive head and
a ten-year-old Yale diploma behind him in some Lexington
attic — a gusty youth of thirty, familiar with Paris and Berlin,
leaving St. Louis now to have a look at this place called
Chicago. The girl whom he has just married is with him, yet
even on his honeymoon he falls in love with the city — so much
in love that all the rest of his life he will call Chicago his
"bride."

He walks around the streets, then says, "I think Chicago

is destined to be the greatest city on this continent. I have de-
cided to cast my lot with it." And, like a Doge of Venice marry-
ing the Adriatic Sea, Carter H. Harrison the First weds him-
self to the city whose young figure he can see ripening under
its blowsy homespun dress.

Welcoming the Toronto Board of Trade visitors to Chicago
in 1855, "Deacon" Bross directed their attention to the fact
that the Great Northwest out and beyond Chicago held 700,000
square miles, "a territory larger than twenty-three older States
East of the Mississippi. ... It contains the largest and ricV
est deposits of lead and copper that exist on the globe, * . .
Where the buffalo now range in countless thousands, must,
after all, become the greatest corn-growing sections of the
Union. There, too, will be reared the countless herds of cattle
and hogs, to be driven to Chicago and packed in beef and
pork to feed the Eastern States, with an abundance to spare
for all the nations of Europe." He quoted a certain Captain
Hugunin, veteran lake sailor, who had said, "The great God,
when he made the mighty West, made also the lakes and the
mighty St. Lawrence to float its commerce to the ocean."

Chicago, as Bross pictured it, was the place where the fu-
ture centered. With fifty-seven hotels, eight of them first-class,
Chicago had become a convention city. Delegates saw stone
and brick houses, standing shoulder to shoulder with dingy
huts and squalid shanties. They saw broad, filthy streets lined
with shade trees. In 1856, the city had more than 84,000
people. It had formed its Historical Society.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" drew unprecedented throngs. Seven
daily newspapers, fifteen weeklies, and six monthlies were being
published in the city. Horace Greeley, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Henry Ward Beeeher, Lucy Stone, the "woman's rights" agi*
tator, and Fred Douglass, the negro Abolitionist orator, were
heard. Rice's Theater brought the leading New York stars-
74

In two years, Chicago would have its first full orchestra, grand
opera would have begun its annual "season," an art association
would be incorporated and give exhibits. Steel-rolling mills had
come to the North Side.

Dr. William Mason, the Boston pianist, traveling over
America in the 550s on the first pianoforte tour ever held,
was given a grand reception after his Chicago appearance.
Beaming upon his hosts, he asked, "Where are your married
women?" Only girls seemed to confront him.

The reply was, "They are here. They were girls in New
England, but our fellows went after them, and they are all
married now."

Ever afterwards Mason explained Chicago's greatness and
her energy by pointing to those "sweet New England girls."

"In 1856, the four railroad lines running west of Chicago
carried out 107,653 more persons than they brought back,"
said Bross in the annual report of progress which he sent out
from Chicago to the curious world. "We have eleven trunk
railroad lines and seventeen branches, one hundred and four
trains arriving or departing each day. By various routes two
hundred and fifty thousand have gone west of Chicago and
north of Missouri this year. Three million, three hundred thou-
sand passengers entered the city. A steamer, loaded with wheat
at Chicago, unloaded it at Liverpool. In grain and lumber we
surpass any city in the world."

At the end of the next year, he was saying, "In 1857 our
two Eastern railroad-lines brought West 94,998 more passen-
gers than they took back, while four of our western lines car-
ried 76>837 more people West out of Chicago than they car-
ried back into it* Two hundred thousand more people at least
have found homes west of Chicago."

This in the face of the national "panic," which struck in

'57, was felt by Bross to be pretty good. The glorious city, as
lie described it, was marching ahead, panic or no panic.

Meanwhile, in Chicago crime was rampant. Idle men walked
the streets, or came and went riding the railroad bumpers.
Wages for those lucky enough to find work were fifty cents a
day. Immigrants finding legal difficulties in getting home-
steads turned back into the city, adding to the congestion.
Burglaries, street hold-ups, safe-blowing, were almost a nightly
matter. Many old and prominent commercial houses smashed.
Distraction was in the air. The police were denounced viciously.
"The city is at the mercy of the criminal classes," shrieked
the Tribune.

The city's good name must be saved. So many travelers had
been robbed and so many stories of Chicago's crime had been
broadcast that business was suffering.

Long John Wentworth, mounting to the mayor's chair, de-
cided to clean house. He looked first at the "Sands." This was
the name given to that vice-area north of the river where the
farm boys and the sailors got fevered pictures of Chicago,
which they carried away with them. Cheap lodging-houses,
rattle-trap parlors of assignation and prostitution, low saloons,
gambling-dens, clustered there on land which nobody owned.
For years the section had been a source of diversion to the
amateur fire-fighters of the city. Blazes were frequent all over
Chicago, and at the alarm, which was usually sounded by small
boys rushing delightedly through the streets, volunteer fire-
men swarmed out with their buckets to run with the engine.
If the fire was in the Sands then there was sport indeed,
sport chopping up the property of frowsy old "madames,"
sport in throwing water on the fleeing Jezebels, who had no
recompense under the law, sport in knocking down whole build-
ings, whether the fire demanded such a sacrifice or no-
According to the Chicago Tribune of April 21, 1857, "a
large number of persons, mostly strangers in the city, have
been enticed into the dens there and robbed, and there is but
little doubt that a number of murders have been committed by

the desperate characters who have made these dens their homes.
The most beastly sensuality and the darkest crimes have had
their homes in the Sands, so famous in Chicago police annals.

"Several unsuccessful attempts had been made to break up
the Sands, but the land upon which they stood was in liti-
gation in the United States courts and the litigants, in view
of the uncertainty of the law, were disinclined to take any vio-
lent measures to eject the occupants.

"A short time since, Hon. W. B. Ogden (still Chicago's rich-
est citizen and now 'railroad king') purchased the interest of
one of the litigants, and a few days since, Mr. Ogden's agents
notified all the occupants to vacate the premises forthwith, or
their buildings would be torn down, and at the same time, to
avoid as much difficulty as possible, purchased the buildings
of such of the owners as would sell them at a reasonable price.55

Finance, and better business, and the righteous rule of the
strong were all playing behind the scenes on April 20th, when
Mayor Wentworth frowned upon the Sands. Nest day he
struck. One legend has it that he drew off most of the male
habitues by advertising a big dog-fight on the outskirts of
the city. At any rate, there was small resistance when a deputy
sheriff, accompanied by thirty policemen and the real-estate
agent of the "Railway King," bore down upon the district
and began tearing down five of the disreputable houses. Four
shanties soon joined these houses in ruin. As soon as the in-
mates had lugged their pitifully scant property to the street,
hooks and chains were sunk in the structures and teams pulled
them down.

A tremendous crowd of sightseers gathered and swelled as
the news spread. At 4.30 that afternoon, fire broke out and
six more buildings disappeared — the Tribune laying the blame
on the inmates, who had supposedly done the thing for spite.

Out-of-town newspapers said that Chicago had done another
thing characteristically violent and bold; the incident was
alternately praised and condemned from one end of the coun-
try to the other* In reality, the results were unfortunate for

Chicago, serving to scatter criminals into residence sections
just at a time when financial depression was turning hungry
workmen into burglars and garroters.

Succeeding Wentworth as mayor was John C. Haines —
"Copper-stock" Haines, so-called on account of his dabblings
on the stock market — and his police were nicknamed "coppers/'
a slang word that was soon adopted by the whole country.

With the extension of the railroads, Chicago "drummers" at
this period appeared before the astounded eyes of the country
merchants. The city, turning to wholesale trade, pursued new
business relentlessly in all directions, including the mighty
East. Merchants employed traveling salesmen whose distribu-
tion of cigars, whispered anecdotes and big-town talk enlivened
the rustic scene. Small-town girls were warned to beware of
them, just as they were told to yield nothing to the smart
brakemen who swung off and on the railroad cars so dashingly.
The West awakened to the fact that Chicago, not New York
or St. Louis or Cincinnati, was henceforth the center of its
trade.

Even when the national panic of '57 cast the country into
despondency more spectacular than that of '37 or '47, Chicago
seemed to suffer less than Eastern cities. True enough, twenty
thousand of its workers faced starvation, while its warehouses
were packed with produce that merely waited for higher prices ;
true it was that 117 out of its 1,350 business establishments
failed, but Chicago's business men stood close together, and
their "drummers," although a little brash and far less numer-
ous, kept plying the midlands and the great Northwest. With
the cities crippled, the "drummers" concentrated on the farm-
ers and their village merchants, thus winning to Chicago's
markets many who had previously looked to New York*

Fifty-six churches and eighty ballrooms were open. In the
latter, bands played from morning to night, waltzing con-
78

tinuing without intermission. Two theaters displayed seduc-
tive women in "tights" and "very short garments." Saloons
closed the front door and drew the window-shades on Sunday,
but kept the side door open and busy. Dogs roamed the streets
as they did a generation before, biting many people. Newspa-
pers said hydrophobia was too frequent. Smallpox still stalked,
and the cholera came and went.

Clark Street was paved from Lake to Polk with wood blocks
in ?59. In that year the horsecars appeared, running on State
Street south to the city limits, on Madison and Randolph west
nearly to the city's edge, on North Clark from the river to
the boundary, also on Larrabee and Clybourne Avenues.

Yet the Chicago Weekly Democrat was asking, "Why do so
many children die in Chicago?" adding that "nine out of every
ten quarts of milk come from cows fed on whiskey slops, with
their bodies covered with sores and tails all eaten off."

In 1860 Chicago shipped 31,108,759 bushels of grain; prop-
erty had increased seventeen per cent, in four years, and stood
at $37,053,512.

A correspondent of the London Times, reporting the Amer-
ican tour of the Prince of Wales that year, described Chicago
as "an extraordinary melange of the Broadway of New York
and little shanties, of Parisian buildings mixed some way with
backwoods life."

Charles Dudley Warner, deserting his lawyer's desk in Chi-
cago that year for the East and authorship, carried with him
a parting impression of "one of the shabbiest and most un-
attractive of cities." He remembered that "its streets were mud
sloughs, its sidewalks a series of more or less rotten planks.
Half the town was in process of elevation above the tadpole
level and a considerable part on wheels — a moving house being
about the only wheeled vehicle that could get around with any
comfort to the passengers."

When the distant world thought of Chicago, as it did so
often in I860, it thought of crime, filth, outlandish indifference
to culture, yet it thought more about Chicago's prodigious
growth, and its incredible handling of Western commerce.
British, as well as Eastern, newspapers were reprinting Bross'
statistics and civic hallelujahs with exclamations of wonder.
St. Louis and Cincinnati were still ahead sixty thousand each
in population and were commercial giants, too. However, the
world talked not of them, but of Chicago. They had had no
"boosters" of Bross* genius.

The town might be bold and bad, but it was rich, even con-
sidering the panic, and it was thrilling !

Arrogant it was, already sneering at its older rivals of the
West, as when the Chicago Times boasted, "Chicago is the half-
way house on the great commercial thoroughfare across the
continent. St. Louis is a way station on a side track.55 But with
this "blowing," as "boosting" was called in those days, went
so much accomplishment that Eastern capitalists poured in
the money with which the town's amazing railroad and in-
dustrial progress was achieved.

As Chicago came to the portcullis of the Civil War, it was
apparent that the "boosters" had triumphed amazingly. Over
in England, Richard Cobden would be reflecting Bross propa-
ganda a little later when he would say to Goldwin Smith, as
that Oxford professor set out across the Atlantic, "See two
things in America, if nothing else — Niagara and Chicago*"

CHAPTER VIII

T is the morning of May 16, 1860.

Chicago, which has had its first convention thirteen years
before at the River and Harbor meeting, is now to have the
first of a spectacular series of national political conventions.

To house the assemblage of the new Republican party that
will nominate its candidate for the most portentous election in
the republic's history, Chicago has erected a huge, ramshackle
affair on Lake Street, where the old Sauganash Hotel once
stood, a wooden shed, the "Great Wigwam," holding, it is esti-
mated, from 10,000 to 20,000 people, so reckless are the statis-
ticians.

Chicago is excited over something more than the mere im-
mensity of the throng ; it is afire with zeal for the Illinois can-
didate, Abraham Lincoln. For days the common people of the
Northwest have been streaming in on the railroads and plank
roads. They too are whooping it up for the "Rail-Splitter,"
friend of the pioneer, the worker, and the poor man. Newspaper
men think there are 4*0,000 of them in town. Mobs cheer around
the Tremont House, where the Lincoln men cluster about the
rugged David Davis, pioneer judge in Lincoln's circuit-riding
days.

The spirit of the Northwest grips the town, declaring that

the Republican party shall not be so priggish as the defunct
Whigs, nor so Puritan and narrow as the Abolitionists. It must
be a thing of the West — of the common people. Straight whis-
key, the drink of the pioneer, flows freely. Champagne suppers
are given delegates who are to go away with everlasting dreams
of that fiery, patrician delicacy.

Over at the Richmond Hotel, on Michigan and South Water
Street, is the headquarters of the Seward men — William H.
Seward, cultured, eloquent New Yorker, whom "thinking peo-
ple" agree is obviously the best man to nominate. The Seward
crowd has money, organization, brass bands, flags, and East-
ern manners.

The Lincoln managers are rougher in dress, more given to
chewing tobacco ; their finances are low, but they have brains
of superior cunning.

While the Seward delegation with its followers parades the
streets, cheering and singing to impress their candidate's dis-
tinctions upon the people, Judge Davis and his backwoods
politicians are packing the Wigwam with Lincoln partisans.
Lank farmers are taking all available seats in the convention
hall. They have been told to save their breath for the moment
when Lincoln shall be nominated. On the roof Illinois men are
mounting a cannon. On top of the Tremont Hotel, across town,
they are mounting another. Odds in the convention are against
them, but they are sure they will win.

Up to the doors come the Seward paraders, their bands
blaring. They cannot get in. At length the accredited dele-
gates are squeezed through to their places, but only a hand-
ful of the "workers/5 who have come West to stampede the
convention for their candidate, can find standing room,

William Evarts, the famous New York lawyer, nominates
Seward in classic prose. The New York delegates shout and
are joined by most Eastern delegates. But without the claque
that cools its heels in the throng outside, the demonstration is
disappointing.

Then comes to the platform Norman B. Judd, the Chicago
lawyer, sharp, vigorous, practical, and when he has nominated
Abraham Lincoln, the Wigwam shakes to prairie yells, split-
ting thunder as against the pistol "pop" of the Seward ac-
claim. Indiana seconds the name of Lincoln. A moment later
the Ohio delegation splits, and a faction sends up a speaker to
join Illinois and Indiana in proposing Lincoln. The yells dwarf
those that have gone before. Governor Henry S. Lane of In-
diana climbs up on the stand and does a comic, capering dance
with hat and cane.

"It wasn't a shout," one observer remembered later, "it was
worse than a shout. It was an unbridled shriek such as I never
heard before or since. It was almost unearthly. It made the
Wigwam quiver. It made a cold sweat come out on the brows
of the members of the New York delegation,"

At length the noise subsides. Other States put forth their
favorite sons, Cameron, Bates, Dayton, Chase. The fight is
between Seward and Lincoln, the East and the West.

On the first ballot Seward has ITS1/^, Lincoln 10#; neces-
sary to nominate $33. Lincoln's managers, deciding to dis-
obey their candidate's express order that they keep his hands
free of pre-nomination promises, offer Pennsylvania a place in
the Cabinet if it will swing to Lincoln. Pennsylvania comes
over.

The clerk reads the third ballot — Lincoln 331%, one and
one-half votes from the goal. Ohio rises to change its vote, tak-
ing four away from Chase and giving them to Lincoln.

A man on the roof bellows to the street crowds, "Abe Lin-
coln is nominated !" and the cannon on the roof fires, making
the Wigwam rattle above the din of yelling Westerners.

The cannon on top of the Tremont Hotel takes up the sa-
lute and repeats it one hundred times, while Chicago turns it-
self upside down with rapture. The telegraph shoots the word
to the North and the South. In the East, radical anti-slavery
men shake their heads, thinking that this man Lincoln is not

Over at the Richmond Hotel, on Michigan and South Water
Street, is the headquarters of the Seward men — William H.
Seward, cultured, eloquent New Yorker, whom "thinking peo-
ple5' agree is obviously the best man to nominate. The Seward
crowd has money, organization, brass bands, flags, and East-
ern manners.

The Lincoln managers are rougher in dress, more given to
chewing tobacco ; their finances are low, but they have brains
of superior cunning.

Up to the doors come the Seward paraders, their bands
blaring. They cannot get in. At length the accredited dele-
gates are squeezed through to their places, but only a hand-
ful of the "workers," who have come West to stampede the
convention for their candidate, can find standing room.

At length the noise subsides. Other States put forth their
favorite sons, Cameron, Bates, Dayton, Chase. The fight is
between Seward and Lincoln, the East and the West.

On the first ballot Seward has 173%, Lincoln 102; neces-
sary to nominate 233. Lincoln's managers, deciding to dis-
obey their candidate's express order that they keep his hands
free of pre-nomination promises, offer Pennsylvania a place in
the Cabinet if it will swing to Lincoln. Pennsylvania comes
over.

The clerk reads the third ballot — Lincoln 231%, one and
one-half votes from the goal. Ohio rises to change its vote, tak-
ing four away from Chase and giving them to Lincoln.

A man on the roof bellows to the street crowds, "Abe Lin-
coln is nominated !" and the cannon on the roof fires, making
the Wigwam rattle above the din of yelling Westerners.

going to be stern enough with the Southerners. "He is too
weak, too uncouth, too simple-minded. He doesn't see the wick-
edness of the slaveholders. They'll outwit him."

In the West and Northwest the people are saying, "Abe Lin-
coln hates slavery. He sees that it's morally wrong, but he isn't
going to persecute the South on that account. The South isn't
all to blame, Abe Lincoln won't free the slaves, as Seward
might, and provoke war. All he'll do will be to preserve the
Union and that's what we want."

Down South the people make ready to follow their fire-
brand politicians out of the Union. They have been told by
their leaders that Lincoln, the "gorilla," will trample South-
ern rights under foot, take the slaves away, confiscate prop-
erty, loose the Northern rabble of "nigger lovers" to rule the
proud old aristocracy of the South. Secession is the only an-
swer as they see it.

It is Chicago in November, 1860.

Down the muddy streets come the "Wide Awakes," smartly
drilled marching men — young men in glazed fatigue-caps,
capes of oilcloth, shining in the light of the gasoline torches
that they carry. Behind them come other companies, simi-
larly uniformed, but carrying long, thin fence-rails with lan-
terns dangling from the ends and bearing portraits of their
Rail-Splitter candidate.

The Wide Awakes are Chicago's contribution to the Lincoln
campaign. The whole North copies the idea — a half-million
youths have joined the semi-military bodies and travel to all
the rallies for miles around their homes.

Six months will pass, and most of these same young men
will have changed the oilcloth uniforms to army blue, and in
place of the torches and thin fence-rails they will be bearing
Union muskets.

Now in November Chicago has turned its back on "Steve"
Douglas, whom it loves in spite of his heresies. It cannot vote
84

for him and his Northern Democratic party, which is for com-
promising with the South. The slave-barons have gone too far.
They must be curbed* Lincoln will hold them in check without,
it is hoped, provoking them to war. Besides, "Steve" hasn't a
chance. The Southern Democrats have broken away from him
because he is too Northern. They will vote for Breckenridge on
another Democratic ticket, one that clamors defiantly for
Southern rights.

At the polls Chicago is to go for Lincoln by almost 5,000
majority, Illinois by 11,646. Nathaniel Pope's old dream has
come true. Chicago has held the State to the North, although
Mr. Lincoln, who will preserve the Union, is himself one of
those Southern immigrants who have come up across the Ohio
on that migration which Pope sought to offset when he kid-
naped Chicago for Illinois.

CHAPTER, IX

JL c

ORT SUMTER'S guns on April 13, 1861, announced disunion
to the republic. There was no question as to how the native-
born population of Chicago and northern Illinois would take
the news. Yankee blood flung out the flag at the first echoes
of those cannon down in South Carolina.

Where the city's fifty thousand foreign-born would stand
was a different matter. Would they risk their necks at the call
of the Republicans, one great wing of whom had told all
"aliens" that they were unfit to hold office in city, state, and
nation?

From the North Side came a reassuring answer. The Ger-
mans, the Jews, themselves German, the Scandinavians, and
the French overlooked past wrongs and for the sake of the
anti-slavery cause supported the Union.

Anxious eyes turned to the South Side, where lived the Irish*
There the rub would come. As a unit the Irish had opposed the
Abolitionists and all who planned to set the negro free. From
the day that the average Irish immigrant landed in the New
World he took this stand* He had fled poverty and starvation
at home, and arriving in America without funds and without
education, it was necessary that he work with Hs hands* Along
the rivers this put him into competition with slave labor* Natu-
86

rally he became anxious to preserve race distinctions, and even
after he had risen to boss other laborers, as he usually did
within a remarkably short space of time, he held to the no-
tion that slavery was the just thing for the colored man. This
brought him, with his genius for politics, into the Democratic
party, which would leave slavery alone. Furthermore that
party, under the broadly human leadership of the Protestant
Stephen A. Douglas, had welcomed the Irish Catholic new-
comers into its ranks, while the Whigs, priggishly vain of the
"old American stock," repelled them.

Then when the Know-Nothings, preaching racial and reli-
gious hatreds, joined with the Abolitionists in the newly form-
ing Republican party, an Irishman was doubly a Democrat.
It bound him to that party with bonds of rage when he heard
Know-Nothings say, "The Roman Catholics are all Democrats
because the Pope has ordered them to support the Southern
slaveholders."

Furthermore, any Chicago Irishman was living in the midst
of unusual Abolitionist sentiment. Since the ?40s Chicago had
been called a "nigger-loving" town by Southerners. No other
city, unless it be Philadelphia, was so kind to the colored mai^;
In it terminated many lines on the "Underground Railroad,"
that semi-secret chain of Abolitionists who spirited runaway
slaves from the Ohio River up through the midlands from
house to house until they reached Chicago. Consignments of
as many as fifteen and twenty fugitives went through the city
at a time, boarding the lake boats, which took them to the
safety of Canada. United States marshals trying to recapture
this Southern property were mobbed by Chicago citizens while
the police laughed. No slave was ever taken back once he
reached the city. Freed negroes — there were 1,500 in Chicago
by 1860 — openly menaced the Federal officers. In their debat-
ing and literary societies the Chicago freedmen openly de-
nounced the Fugitive Slave Law, which obligated citizens to
help slave-owners recover their runaway chattels.

Even "Steve" Douglas, whom Chicago loved and who was a
true friend of the city, sneered at it as "Abolitionist Chicago."
In the late summer of 1854, Douglas clashed with this spirit
when he attempted to explain to the city his reasons for hav-
ing introduced into the United States Senate the hated Kansas-
Nebraska Bill. The Senator, anxious for Southern votes in his
Presidential race, which was to come four years hence, had
broken the old agreement which said that new States carved
out of the Northwest should proscribe slavery. "Let the peo-
ple rule," was the position of Douglas. "If they want slavery,
let them have it." To the anti-slavery North this act seemed
deepest treachery, and Douglas came back to Chicago from
Washington by the light of his own burning effigies, as he de-
scribed it.

In North Market Hall, on Michigan near Clark, he ap-
peared. Since six o'clock the church bells had tolled in pro-
test against him. Flags all over town were at half-mast* What-
ever applause there was to meet him was drowned in the hisses,
groans, catcalls and boos of his enemies. The Irish, battling for
him, were overwhelmed. Douglas squared his shoulders in the
face of the tornado, shook his fist at it, and shouted that he'd
stay till morning.

"We won't go home until morning," answered the mob, sing-
ing derisively.

Both Douglas and the mob kept their word. After midnight
he gave up, roaring:

"It is now Sunday morning — I'll go to church and you may

GO TO HELL."

Only his perfect fearlessness kept the crowd from killing
him, cool observers thought. If the Irish needed nothing else
to make them idolize Douglas, his actions that night were
enough. They voted almost solidly for him and against Lin-
coln in 1860, believing that the Republicans were bent on free*
88

ing the negro and proscribing opportunity for the "foreign
born."

Now in the Spring of 1861 Lincoln was calling upon them
to fight for the Union which he represented. It warmed "native-
born" hearts — perhaps made them blush a little for the past —
to read the poster that, on April 20, spoke the Irish answer:

"RALLY! All Irishmen in favor of forming a regiment of
Irish Volunteers to sustain the Government of the United
States, in and through the present war, will rally at North
Market Hall, this evening, April 20th. Come all! For the
honor of the Old Land, Rally ! Rally ! for the defense of the
New."

It was signed by James A. Mulligan, Alderman Comiskey
and a dozen others, including "Mike" McDonald, the gambler.
In two hours three hundred and twenty-five men, many of them
veterans of European wars, had signed, and a week after the
first news had come "The Irish Brigade," with Mulligan as
colonel, was waiting in green shirts, fuming because the Illi-
nois quota had already been filled.

By April 25th, the Irish as a bloc were pro-war, for their
idol, "Steve" Douglas, had come home from Washington to
whip his followers into Lincoln's line. "No one can be a true
Democrat without being a patriot," Douglas declared, assail-
ing secession with all his unmatched eloquence.

The Little Giant had laid aside all thoughts of self and of
his ancient rivalry with Lincoln. Like any soldier, he began
fighting, forgetful of his career, his former power, his disap-
pointment at losing the Presidency. Not long did he spend his
energy on Chicago Democrats ; they were already loyal. Doug-
las* problem lay in southern Illinois, where the sons of Vir-
ginia pioneers were declaring for the South in open mass-
meetings. Williamson County had declared itself for the split-
ting of Illinois. "Egypt" would attach itself to the Confed-
eracy. Congressman John A. Logan, whose father had come
from the "ould sod," had stirred Franklin County with a

speech in which he compared the Southern seceders with the
Revolutionary heroes of 1776-

Logan's law partner, William H. Green, had announced
that the people of southern Illinois "would stand like a wall
of fire against any attempt to invade the North/' but that "if
the North marches upon the South, her forces will be met
upon the prairie and made to walk over dead bodies of the
men who will meet them." Ex-Governor John Reynolds was
telling the Egyptians that "before God and man, the revolu-
tion in the South is the greatest demonstration of human great-
ness and grandeur that was ever performed on the globe/'

Douglas met such sentiment head on. To the State Legis-
lature and to crowds over the State he spoke as he had never
spoken before, arguing, pleading for loyalty. Illinois, for all
that it had voted him down four months earlier, loved him
better than any man of that day, and under his spell those
who had once been Kentuckians, Virginians, or North Caro-
linians stood for the Union.

Tragically for Lincoln, his old rival Douglas, now a sup-
porter, wore himself out in this feverish speaking-campaign,
and by June was dead, his life given for the Union cause as
truly as those of the soldiers who fell before secession bullets —
himself a greater loss to the North than the battle of Bull Run.

But he had done enough to hold southern Illinois in the
Union. His friend Logan — "Dirty Work" Logan, as the Re-
publicans had called him for the unscrupulous work against
Lincoln in the campaign of 1860 — was joining the Union army
even as Douglas died. He soon would be the chief volunteer
soldier of the North, and a major-general Massac County,
where William Green had said the citizens would fight North-
ern armies, had begun to overcrowd its Union quotas. In the
nest four years it would put four-fifths of its voters in bltie
uniforms. The Cairo region, hotbed of secession sympathy, had
sent companies to join the South, it was true, but it had sent
many more to join the North, and would by the end of the
90

conflict have furnished more fighters to the Union army per
quota than had "Abolitionist Chicago."

Three weeks after the first drums rolled, Chicago had en-
listed thirty-eight companies, 3,500 men in all. Its banks had
offered Governor Yates a half -million dollars. Its soldiers were
spiriting guns and ammunition by night out of the beleaguered
government arsenal at St. Louis. Its crack militia company,
Ellsworth's Zouaves, was making ready, although its organ-
izer, Elmer E. Ellsworth, had gone East to lead a similar body
South, and had fallen hauling down the "rebel" flag at Alex-
andria, Virginia, first man to die in the Civil War.

By July, Illinois had enrolled four times as many troops as
could be accepted, and by September, The Irish Brigade had
set Chicago cheering with its exploits at Lexington, Missouri.

Sixty acres at 34th and Cottage Grove, opposite the grounds
of the first University of Chicago, which had also been a part
of the Douglas estate, were opened as a camp in September,
and as Camp Douglas it remained until the end of the war,
used both as a training-ground and as a prison for the cap-
tured Confederates, of whom as many as ten thousand were
often confined between its thin stockade of one-inch boards.

In October, forty-three regiments were in service, more than
New York State could boast. Thousands of youngsters from
Illinois and Chicago, impatient at delay, had joined Wiscon-
sin, Michigan, Missouri, or Indiana regiments in order to get
to the front. The State had, in that month, seventy-three thou-
sand men under arms. All classes, all creeds, were represented.
The Jews of Chicago in 1862 raised and armed a company.

Four years later, when the war was done and the provost
marshal was checking up on his statistics, it was found that
Illinois had sent 231,488 men into the Northern army, a show-
ing that was, on the basis of population, far above that of any

other State. Only a handful of men in a few townships had
been drafted, and that was an act savagely attacked at the
time as a clumsy mistake on the part of the provost marshal,
who had ignored the fact that the State was then well above
its quota.

Chicago had sent fifteen thousand men out of a population
that numbered one hundred thousand in 1861 and one hun-
dred and seventy thousand in 1865. Of these fifty-eight were
conscripts. During the war Chicago had introduced the sani-
tary fairs, most effective of all civilian devices for raising funds
with which to aid sick and wounded soldiers. Its two fairs, the
first in '63 and the second in '65, collected something like a half
million dollars, while those of other cities, held in imitation,
swelled the total of Union relief to five million.

The city which had stood still in numbers since the panic of
'57 reeled, like all other American cities, under the impact of
that first year of war. Then in '62 it held 138,186 people,
and by '64 it had climbed to a total of 169,353, More signifi-
cant was its export of grain, which in 1859 had been 16V
000,000 bushels and which had risen in 1860 to 31,000,000.
In that first year of war, the figure soared to 50,000,000 bush-
els and in '62 to 65,4*00,000.

Cyrus McCormick, the Chicago Reaper-King, was respon-
sible for that.

As the war began, it found the prairies full of wheat and
McCormick reapers. His Chicago factory hummed. And as
the war progressed, drawing off every third man for the army,
wheat production went up instead of down — European econo*
mists saying that the thing couldn't be true. They did not
yet appreciate the reaper. If the negroes did the work behind
the lines for the Confederates, the reaper did it for the Yan-
kees. The duel between the wheat States and the cotton States
was on, with the North using the invention of a Virginian and
92

the South using the invention of a Northerner — Eli Whitney
of New England having supplied the cotton gin for the "Cot-
ton Kingdom."

Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War, said in 1861r "With-
out McCormick's invention, I feel the North could not win and
that the Union would be dismembered."

With cotton disappearing from the markets, Eastern capi-
tal turned to the West, where the new giants, wheat, corn, and
hogs, were provisioning the army and where new myriads of
workers in factories turned out sinews of war. Money had all
but collapsed in the West, owing to the ruin of Southern se-
curities, which had been widely held there. Chicago bankers,
those who weathered the storm, plunged into the new fields and
with the establishment of a government purchasing agency
there waxed fat. Factories multiplied. The city was safe
from invasion and yet close, by means of the railroads, to the
whole front. People in Missouri, Kentucky, lower Indiana,
Illinois and Ohio, dreading the cavalry raids that threatened,
made their investments in Chicago.

Taking a hint from McCormick's triumph, Chicago manu-
facturers began making other kinds of farm implements, which
the short-handed prairie farmers bought avidly. Speculation
kept the town in a turmoil that often threatened to overshadow
the war. Fortunes were made. Men who had walked to work
in 1860 drove about town in fine carriages in '63. Canadians
streamed down into the city to get the war wages.

The four-year war added over seventy per cent, to the city's
population and over ninety per cent, to its property values.
Taxes rose almost four hundred per cent.

More dramatic to the life of Chicago than any battles on the
distant front was the fact that in the winter of 1862-1863 the
city became "hog-butcher of the world," as its chief poet of the
following century would sing. Nine hundred thousand hogs
were packed in three months — one-third of all those killed in
the West, and a number that dwarfed anything like it on earth.
Cincinnati was "Porkopolis" no longer. Where in '60 Chicago

killed but half as many hogs as "The Queen City," it had,
in the winter of ?63-564, killed almost three times as many.

With that promptness in cooperation which made other cit-
ies look on with envy, Chicago business men in 1863 and '64
held conclaves to better the packing-situation. Up to then
each packer had bought his hogs and cattle from independent
yards, widely scattered. Prices had been hectic. Trade might
swamp one yard while another was empty. The railroad men
lost profits in switching carloads of animals here and there.
Eastern roads, groaning with the packed meat that would sup-
ply the seaboard and Europe, wanted organization at the
source.

So in 1864 the Union Stock Yards were laid out on paper
and the capital stock, one million dollars, was immediately sub-
scribed, the nine railroads terminating in the city taking
$925,000 worth. Out beyond the southwestern limits of the city,
four miles from the downtown section, the Yards were begun
on a square mile of land whose level was two feet below the
river.

Chicago would lay down a better city for hogs and cattle
than for humans. Thirty-one miles of sewers turned the quag-
mire into land hard and dry. Seven miles of streets and alleys
were laid in wood blocks for the hoofs of the animals — three
hundred and forty-five acres turned into a town* methodical,
convenient, sanitary.

When it was opened on Christmas Day, 1865, it was large
enough to accommodate 75,000 hogs, 21,000 cattle, 22,000
sheep, 200 horses, all together 118,200 anirf&ls. Three miles
of troughs brought clear artesian water from a well a thou-
sand feet deep for the herds there, while back in the city people
drank lake water which the Chicago Tribume was to describe as
a "nuisance that has made Chicago scarcely endurable* * * *
There is no room to doubt that a large proportion of diseases
of the alimentary canal, which figure so largely in the death
rate of this city, are due to the use of the nasty staff, for being
poisoned with which the people of Chicago pay such heavy
94

water rates. Longer poisoning with the filthy slush, miscalled
water, is not only unnecessary, but sinful."

One thousand men at a time worked on the nine railways as
they came into the yards, each road owning a thousand feet of
platform, onto which, by double chutes, both top and bottom
tiers of hog cars could simultaneously unload.

Back in the city the depots for Chicago and the traveling
world were already outgrown.

The new-rich appeared on the scene. Fat with war profits,
manufacturers and merchants began to build mansions in the
suburbs. In *63 the city spread out to a new area of twenty-
four square miles. In ?64< not less than six thousand buildings,
costing $4,700,000, went up — a slight increase over the figures
of the year before. Public buildings were erected* The built-
over area of the city doubled in the two years.

In 1860 only five streets could boast of buildings as far out
from town as two and a half miles. Clark and State, running
north and south, had them, so did Madison, Randolph and
Lake to the west, but outside of these scattering houses, noth-
ing ventured further than a mile and a half from the Court
House. By 1865 the city had well settled eighteen square
miles, and occupied all streets to a distance of three miles from
the center — along the five main streets much further.

Chicagoans could afford stone fronts now; iron office build-
ings appeared. Stone sidewalks were laid downtown. The
banks established their first clearing-house in ?65. The Cham-
ber of Commerce building went up at Washington and La-
Salle, and the Board of Trade with its fourteen hundred mem-
bers was housed there. Grain shipments in 566 stood at over
sixty-six million bushels, more than twice the figure for 1860.

The city, rich at last, increased its sewer mileage to seventy-
five. The sewers both helped and hurt. They emptied into
the river and the river emptied into the lake. As from old
days, Garlic Creek had a terrific odor. Factories and docks
multiplied along the banks, and up until the opening of the
Stock Yards, the slaughter-houses grouped there, stifling the;

various sections of the city according as the wind chose to blow.
The shallows in front of the city were contaminated by the
horrible waters of the river, while only six hundred feet from
shore stood the crib through whose wooden inlet the city had
pumped drinking water since 1853. Disease was so common
that in 1862 the position of health officer was created and a
policeman appointed to fill the job.

"At times the stench in dwellings from the fearful water
was intolerable," wrote two editors of the Tribune, as they
later recalled the '60s. "It was not only black, with a shocking
odor, it was greasy to the touch."

Vainly the city had been trying to solve its drainage prob-
lem by use of the canal pumps at Bridgeport. It was thought
that the machinery which lifted Chicago River water into the
Illinois and Michigan Canal could be made to pump fast
enough to create a backward current in the river. Then the
stream could cleanse itself. But the pumps, suck and cough
as they would, could never quite keep ahead of the fresh
floods of refuse which the city — growing so rapidly — dumped
into the river. Less than a year after the new drainage "solu-
tion" had been reached, Garlic Creek was foul enough to be
blamed for an epidemic of erysipelas that gripped the town.

On March 18, 1864, ground was broken for a venture which
Chicago was to proclaim as another one of the wonders of the
world — the lake tunnel. Out into the lake a tunnel five feet
square was laid from the foot of Chicago Avenue, twenty-six
feet under the surface and sloping downward and outward for
a distance of two miles. Nineteen months later a monster crib
was there anchored and attached. To stand the lake storms
this crib was weighted down with 4,500 tons of stone* Mule
cars brought excavated material through the tunnel back to
shore and returned with brick and cement. Scows plied to and
from the crib. Engineers across the world wondered about the
thing. Newspapers stormed because It took so long, The
death rate in the city was shameful.

Not until March, 1867, was it ready. Then, after civic cere*
96

monies, the pumps were set to work sending pure water, at
last, through the one hundred and fifty-four miles of pipe
which the city had waiting. Chicago showed its gratitude by
using three million gallons more a day than it had under the
old system, giving rise to the suspicion that its bathing must
have been somewhat curtailed in the past.

As the war period came to an end, Chicago's "boosters'5 were
louder than ever. They were too numerous to need Bross' pio-
neering spirit, as they trumpeted their city's supremacies into
the ears of a world which already knew and talked of Chicago's
unbelievable progress during the years of destruction and
wastage.

In crime, that other item of its world-fame, the city had
gained in equal measure. More than ever it was the wickedest
place in the world to speakers and writers from other cities.
Quite likely they were correct, for the war had brought in
"bad men" from all over the West — thugs, vagrants, sluggers,
yeggs, pickpockets, confidence men — attracted to the city by
the tales of riches and of bounties for army recruits. Cook
County, which Chicago dominated, was paying $300 to men
who would enlist, help fill the quota, and thus prevent the ne-
cessity of conscription, and by '64 the figure was raised to
$400. "Bounty-brokers" and "bounty- jumpers" became com-
mon. The former were dealers in flesh, who took commissions
for placing men where they would command the highest cash
return, and the latter were professionals who made it a prac-
tice to desert shortly after having accepted the bounty, in
order to return and repeat the process under another name in
another regiment.

The railroads centered criminals in Chicago. Around Roger
Plant's resort at Wells and Monroe Streets, poetically called
"Under the Willow," they nested with prostitutes. Every
window-shade of Roger's establishment bore the legend in gilt

letters "Why Not?55 Andy Routzang's saloon on Clark near
Van Buren kept the police in a frenzy. The river was lined
with "as desperate a class of men as ever disgraced a city," the
police maintained.

In "Conley's Patch," a group of shanties at Adams and
Franklin Streets, flourished the "Bengal Tigeress," a gigantic
procuress who catered to sailors. So powerful was she that it
required four or five policemen to drag her to the station. No
patrol wagons existed, a handicap which forced policemen to
commandeer any sort of vehicle at hand for the transportation
pf drunken or unconscious prisoners. One Lieutenant Beadell
acquired fame by bringing Jimmy Kilf oil, notorious criminal,
downtown two miles in a wheelbarrow.

The central section of the city was alive with street-walkers,
whom the slang of the times named "chippies." The Tribune
estimated their number at two thousand. Many of them kept
their parlors on the fourth floors of the office buildings which
had risen so thickly. Since there were no elevators, these upper
floors were too high for business customers to reach by stair-
ways, and were rented to the ladies of leisure. Policemen let
street solicitations go on without disapproval "Waterford
Jack," eminent adventuress, was best known of her land.

Lou Harper's establishment at 219 Monroe Street was the
city's most splendid "parlor-house," and because it discarded
the traditional red window-curtains and gigantic house-numer-
als of its kind, it was popular with those young men who set
the fashion in the half -world* Its sole advertisement was the
neat letters "Miss Lou Harper."

It was in this palace of sin that Carrie Watson, who was to
become a notorious "madame," had her Chicago beginnings*
Carrie had come from Buffalo to be one of Lou Harper's girls,
and soon attracted the favor of Al Smith, the proprietor of the
gambling house at 91 Clark Street. With APs funds, Carrie
established the gaudy brothel at 441 Clark Street that was
famous clear up to the World's Fair in *9S*

South of Van Buren were other elegant bawdy-houses,
98

among them at Clark and Polk that of Lizzie Allen, who was
to hold forth past the turn of the century, second only in
transcontinental notoriety to that of the Everleigh Sisters,
Minnie and Ada.

With the "red light" district so close to the business section
of the city, and with cheap boarding-houses full of young
bachelor clerks and workmen standing within or close to the
downtown center, Chicago's sins were apparent to all travelers.
Few visitors could escape the sight of "Gamblers Row" on Ran-
dolph Street between State and Clark, and along Clark to
Monroe. Prank Connelly's "Senate" was the show place of the
district, while out toward the river were scores of lower dens.
Keno was the game and so popular was it that at times crowds
blocked the streets outside the halls.

When the street-lamps were lit and the downtown section
blazing, the gamblers, picturesque dogs in the main, from the
Mississippi River boats, were the city's most conspicuous
figures. Farm boys who had poured into the city to work.
Eastern youths who had come to the magnetic new city, gaped
at them admiringly and copied their clothes and manners.

The war had driven this gentry from the steamboats, where
they had thrived so long, and Chicago, booming sensationally,
had attracted them. Southern they were, and feeling their
power, hesitated not at all to talk "rebel talk" in the saloons
and first-floor gambling-houses. Indeed, it was said that of all
the resorts for men-about-town the Tremont House was almost
the sole spot where unadulterated Union talk could be heard.

Amusements were few, athletic sports non-existent — the men
outnumbered the women hopelessly. What was there for
Chicago, so full of money, to do of evenings but gamble?
Wages in the latter half of the war period were high. Soldiers
delirious with the joy of escape kept pouring into town as their
varying terms of enlistment closed, to spend their pay in one
fling before reenlisting or going home to the farm. The police
grafted liberally. Raids were occasional, drastic, and soon for-
gotten,

"War widows" were plentiful. That nickname was applied
to erring wives of absent soldiers as well as to the women who,
at their husbands' deaths in camp or battle, turned to the
easiest road of self-support.

Among the prostitutes the gamblers were kings to be fought
for. The black-legs, as the gamesters were called, were notori-
ously generous, maintaining their mistresses in fine quarters
at Lou Harper's, Lizzie Watson's, Nellie Costello's or other
parlor-houses. They delighted to ride about town in grand
victorias, their strumpets beside them.

With money, liquor, and women all so free to hand, fights
were common among the gamblers. That stretch on Randolph
between Clark and State was known as "Hair-trigger Block,"
as a result of its many shootings. In this block occurred, at the
war's end, a killing which pointed up Chicago's ill fame from
the Atlantic to the Rockies.

Horse-racing had sprung up and with it, George Trussell,
former bookkeeper in a Chicago bank, had risen to prominence.
As half-owner of Dexter, the nation's greatest race-horse of
that day — Dexter who had gone a mile in "two-eighteen" with
Budd Doble up — Trussell was national news. The country, in
its reaction from war horrors, was frivolous, and across it, in
September 1866, eyes scanned the papers eagerly to see the
results of the races between Dexter, General Butler, Medoc,
Cooley, and George M. Patchen, Jr., at the recently opened
Chicago Driving Park.

Around the track and paddock clustered the racing-men,
gamblers, "sports," and their lights-of-love, the latter a gay
spectacle in their multi-colored dresses and spread of parasols*
With them mingled many of Chicago's first business men.
Trussell, silent, hawk-faced, slim, and military of bearing, was
the social lion of the day, but his familiar consort, Mollie, who
was or was not his wife, was not with him* They had quarrelled,
Trussell had wearied of her.

Ten years before, Mollie, after having been seduced In
Columbus, Ohio, had come to Chicago as a chambermaid. Not
100

long did she cling to a broom, however, for her gayety and
figure made her a favorite with the fast young men of the town.
She had a child, whom she soon put in school at South Bend,
Indiana, where, so the newspapers had it, the youngster grew
up in ignorance of its mother's profession. Before long Mollie
had become attached to George Trussell, the romantic dream
of a prostitute's heart. In 564< she branched out as a "madame"
of a parlor-house on Fourth Avenue, and was so occupied when
Trussell made his attempt to forsake her.

On the night after the grand opening of the Driving Park
track, Mollie, perhaps especially jealous of Trussell's enthu-
siasm for Dexter, put on "a gorgeous white moire dress,55 as
the newspapers described it, and went down Gambler's Row
looking for her man. In a saloon she found him. He pushed
her toward the door, where she twisted out of his grasp, and,
drawing a pistol, shot him, after which she fell upon his body,
shrieking, "Oh, my George, my George! He is dead!"

It was a glamorous tragedy for the whole country to read,
and to fasten onto that wicked city, Chicago, and an early
sign of the chivalry of Cook County juries when Mollie went
free.

Scarcely less famous was the murder at the Chicago Driving
Park two weeks after Trussell's death. General Butler with
Driver McKeaver in the sulky behind, was racing Cooley,
whose reins were held by Riley — famous horses and crack
horsemen. Three heats they went to a tie. A fourth was run,
even though twilight hid them from the judges' stand as they
went round the back course. As they thundered out of the
darkness toward the wire, it was seen that General Butler's
driver was missing. McKeaver was found on the far stretch, his
skull crushed by a stone. All bets were declared off and the
coroner's jury found that the thing had been done by "persons
unknown.55

101

Numerous as they were, the Southern gamblers were not
enough to give Chicago anything more than a superficial
appearance of sympathizing with the Confederacy. Deeper
into the body of the city ran the disaffection of the majority
of the Irish and other inheritors of the Douglas tradition,

Lincoln himself alienated them in the Fall of 1862 with his
Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves in Con-
federate States. They felt that the President had got them
to fight for the Union and then, when once they were committed
to the cause, had switched war aims, making them fight for
the liberation of the negro.

When news of a Confederate victory was announced, Archer
Road, where their chief colony lay, would celebrate. In the
Bridgeport region, where they clustered, they found an outlet
for their feelings in chasing any unwary colored man who
unluckily passed at such a time. Nevertheless, many, perhaps
a majority, grimly held to the Union in spite of a feeling
that Lincoln had "duped" them. Their men in the field still
carried on.

News of a Union victory, coming all too seldom in those first
years of war, set the North Side alight with torches and re-
. sounding with bells as the Germans voiced their elation, while
from the South Side, where the Irish dwelt, there was silence
upon all such occasions. During 1863, Chicago lay within the
jurisdiction of General Ambrose E. Burnside, famous for his
sideburns, for his inventions in firearms, his nobility of char-
acter, and his military mistakes. Maddened by anti-war senti-
ments of the Times, he ordered it suppressed, and soldiers
from Camp Douglas out at 34th and Cottage Grove marched
downtown on June 1, 1863, and seized the plant. Imme-
diately two mobs gathered, one of "Copperheads," as anti-war
Democrats were called, the other of uncompromising Union
men. The former was all for marching against the pro-war

Tribune and dismantling it in retaliation. The latter was for
breaking "pro-Southern" heads.

Twenty thousand people were on the street, it was estimated,
that night when the Copperheads made speeches on the Court
House Square. In the Court room of Judge Van H. Higgins,
conservative leaders of both parties were meeting. The Judge
was a stockholder in the Tribune, and didn't want it burned
down. The police, under a Democratic administration, were
with the Copperheads. Judge Higgins, Lyman Trumbull, Con-
gressman Isaac N. Arnold, representing the Republicans, par-
leyed with William B. Ogden, S. S. Hayes, A. W. Arrington,
and M. F. Tuley of the Democrats, and telegraphed resolu-
tions to the President asking him to revoke Burnside's order.
The spirit of the town was against any suppression of free
speech.

While they awaited Lincoln's answer, the Republican mob
rejoiced to hear that Colonel Jennison, Western desperado and
lieutenant of John Brown in the days of "bleeding Kansas,"
would defend the Tribune plant. Jennison, dressed like a cow-
boy, was a familiar man about town, and reputedly a willing
killer. The tale ran through the town that Jennison had put
armed men in all the lofts around the Tribune and that at a
signal from that plant, where he was stationed, Clark Street
would be carpeted with Copperhead corpses.

At news of Jennison's preparations, confidence, even arro-
gance, swept thousands of Republicans into a mass-meeting, in
which they denounced their leaders for having asked Lincoln
to withdraw the ban against the Times. "You're a traitor,"
they howled at Senator Trumbull. "We want Jennison. Jen-
nison's the man for us." But on June 4th, Lincoln's order came
rescinding Burnside's edict and the crisis was over. Union
victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg within a month carried
immense numbers of the Copperheads over into the pro-war
camp.

Not until August, 1864, did Chicago tremble again for its
safety.

103

At that time the Democratic National Convention brought
an immense body of anti-war Northerners to the city. Val-
landingham of Ohio, but lately exiled from the North for his
attacks upon Lincoln, was the center of enthusiastic Democ-
racy. At the Sherman House, where he put up, crowds pressed
to see him, anxious to commend his stand against a continua-
tion of the bloody, "useless" war. Two years before, the Demo-
crats had made tremendous gains in the "off-year" elections.
Now, from the eagerness with which the people, weary of the
indecisive struggle, seemed to be welcoming the campaign for
peace, it seemed that Lincoln was doomed to be defeated for
reelection that Fall.

Long John Wentworth, originally a Democrat but since
1860 a Union Republican, stepped into the breach so far as
Chicago was concerned. He challenged Vallandingham to a
debate on the Court House Square, and worsted him pro-
digiously. The local tide was turned, but the Union men were
still worried, for a fearsome rumor was over the town. It
said, "The Sons of Liberty are rising." This dread organiza-
tion was a secret society of anti-war Democrats that had
grown out of a similar but smaller lodge, the Knights of the
Golden Circle. Into it, across the North, had gone Copper-
heads, Southern sympathizer riff-raff, and solid citizens alike*
Many patriotic men had joined it from no other reason than
to have some moral force against the petty tyrannies that the
super-patriots of the Republican party were forcing on their
enemies. The Republican citizens, through their secret organi-
zation of Union Leagues, were often overbearing toward their
political enemies and so strengthened the Sons of Liberty.

Aid and comfort to "draft-dodgers," to escaping Confed-
erate prisoners, and to anti-war propagandists came out of
enough Copperhead lodges to create a gigantic "scare" now
and then in the North. The Chicago chapter was supposed to
hold desperate cabals in the dead of night at its clubrooms on
the top floor of the McCormick Block at Dearborn and Ran-
104

dolph Streets. And when the city was full of Democrats in
August, 1864, a horrible plot was scented in that loft.

United States Government detectives spread the word that
at the height of the convention fervor, thousands of Sons of
Liberty, armed to the teeth, would set free the eight thousand
Confederate prisoners who cooled their heels at Camp Douglas.
Then, joining forces with this Southern army, they would raid
the banks, burn the town, and march down through Illinois,
merging with other Sons of Liberty until with so great an
army they could force the North to capitulate and declare the
war at an end.

To Chicagoans this fantastic tale seemed likely enough, for
Camp Douglas had been a worry to them ever since "Rebel"
captives had been brought there early in 1861. The prisoners
were always working their way out of the wooden stockade in
ones, twos, threes, or more, and although few got out of town,
they were a reminder that some day a giant jail-delivery might
be effected. Now in August, '64, only 736 Union soldiers, and
they members of the Veterans' Reserve Corps, older men, were
guarding 8,350 prisoners. Considering how the town had con-
tributed food and clothing to the shivering captives in the
early part of the war, it felt outraged at the danger of an
uprising.

The story of the conspiracy as they listened to it was de-
tailed. Jacob Thompson, Confederate agent in Canada, had
sent bold desperados into town with bags of gold. "General"
Charles Walsh, head of the Chicago Sons of Liberty, was
handling the collection of firearms.

Wildly Chicago telegraphed the Government for protection
and, while the Democratic Convention indulged itself in abuse
of Lincoln, calls for peace, and a general clamor for the res-
toration of civil liberties, the 109th Pennsylvania Infantry,
less than a thousand strong, marched in and sat down on
Camp Douglas to await the fun.

Nothing happened. The convention, after all its fevered

105

talk, ignored Vallandingham and nominated for President
George B. McClellan, the Union general, who it knew would
repudiate its plank calling for peace.

Detectives arrested a half-dozen leaders of the Sons of Lib-
erty, including "General" Walsh, and some Kentucky members
of General Morgan's raider-band. In January at Cincinnati
they were convicted of conspiracy, but were released when
Spring brought the collapse of the Confederacy. In time
Chicago felt a little sheepish at having been frightened by the
childish hocus-pocus of the Sons of Liberty.

106

CHAPTER X

HEN the war was done, Chicago looked at itself in delight
and amazement. Then it peered across the prairies at its old
rivals, Cincinnati and St. Louis, and let out a whoop of ela-
tion. In the hurlyburly of the last four years it had passed
the former in population and was now hard on the heels of
the latter. The Queen City was down and the River Queen
was weakening. Hail to the Queen of the Lakes.

It was St. Louis that Chicago was after. The two cities hated
each other, always had, always would. Chicago felt that, in
spite of the Germans who had held northern Missouri to the
Union, St. Louis was Southern, and Chicago, seeing how
ephemeral had been its own anti-war spoutings, knew itself to
be Yankee.

St. Louis, wealthy and contented, had rested on its oars while
Chicago had promoted capital with which to forge onward.
When St. Louis sneered at Chicago for having contributed no
money to the building of its railroads, Chicago answered that
it didn't have to, that it was so wonderful that Eastern bankers
were glad to invest in its future.

As a matter of fact, Chicago, so poor in cash, had been
forced to seek outside help. Ugly and dirty, it had been com-
pelled to fight desperately to be noticed. Its very deficiencies

107

had made it all the more eager to realize its destiny as center
of the Northwest.

As early as 1861 the St. Louis newspapers were warning
their readers that Chicago was taking from it each year
200,000 barrels of flour, 400,000 bushels of wheat, and 17,000
barrels of whiskey.

The Chicago and Alton Railroad, which had connected the
two cities in '54, had in the last of the decade, by additional
spurs, gone far South, tapping the rich agricultural region
between Jacksonville and Monticello for Chicago's benefit. The
lake city drew trade from within fifty miles of the river city,
paying higher prices for produce and charging less for goods
bought in return. All around and past St. Louis into the West
went roads that fed Chicago's markets. Iowa, Kansas, and
eventually Nebraska sent their products to the Chicago roads,
notably the Burlington and Rock Island.

St. Louis newspapers alternately berated both cities, itself
for sloth and Chicago for grasping egotism. Henry Cobb, a
St. Louis booster, writing to the Missouri Republican on
November 26, 1867, called his city the Samson of the com-
mercial realm from Allegheny to the Rocky Mountains, a
strong man fallen a sleepy victim to the artful Delilah,
Chicago.

"Chicago, the tool of the Philistines in the East who were
jealous of the strength of St. Louis," he wrote, "Chicago, the
Delilah, has been furnished with money by the lords of Eastern
capital for shaving St. Louis of his strength, in cutting off
by means of iron railways the trade on his rivers,

"Not only is the trade of the upper Mississippi River, from
St. Paul to Hannibal in Missouri, cut off from St. Louis by
Chicago, but also the trade of the Missouri River from St.
Joseph to Omaha, and even the Rocky Mountains ; not only is
the trade of the Lower Mississippi, in winter cut off by the
same hand, using the Illinois Central Railway, but even the
trade of the Ohio River at Pittsburgh is this day being clipped
108

by the Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway (part of the Penn-
sylvania Railroad system).55

Bitter humiliation it was for St. Louis to find the iron for
Missouri railroads diverted from more direct routes to one by
way of Chicago.

"The Chicago capitalists," said Cobb, "are bridging the
Mississippi River at Quincy, and even the Missouri River at
Kansas City, and propose to draw off the trade not only of
our Missouri Pacific Road, but also of the Southwest, even
daringly striking at the center of our State through Boone-
ville and Sedalia."

Answering St. Louis point by point with patronizing con-
fidence, John Stephen Wright crowed loudly in newspapers
and in pamphlets with which he heralded the virtues of Chicago
real estate. When St. Louis said that the Civil War had para-
lyzed her Mississippi River trade, Wright produced clippings
from her newspapers showing that she admitted, before the
war that her supremacy would disappear unless she fought
for the Northwest trade, which Chicago's railroads were gob-
bling up. When St. Louis declared that the Rocky Mountain
trade must eventually come to her, Wright flaunted forth
quotations from the newspapers of those regions showing that
commerce was flowing to Chicago by way of the Northwestern
Railroad, which had been expanding rapidly since William
B. Ogden had formed it from many smaller lines in 1864.

The completion of the Union Pacific railroad made the
defeat of St. Louis certain. Linking the east and west coasts,
the new line routed transcontinental travelers and shippers
through Chicago and Omaha.

Proudly Wright recopied and broadcasted what the Atchison
(Kansas) Free Press said about the battle of the cities:

"There was a time when St. Louis was the center of all the
trade of the West ; that was when nearly everything depended
upon the trade in furs. Its merchants were staid, substantial

109

men. The current of their business flowed on as smoothly as
the placid waters upon which all their commerce floated. The
nervous, far-sighted, often reckless Yankee was not there.

"Chicago had not begun to spring up until long after St.
Louis had become opulent in her quiet wealth and ease. But
at length shrewd and active merchants set their stakes at
Chicago. At first they bought grain by the wagon-load and
sent it in schooners down the lakes. Then they commenced the
construction of railroads. ... St. Louis merchants clung to
the f ogeyism and the faith of their correspondents away down
the Mississippi. Chicago merchants comprehended the most
progressive ideas of modern commerce ; and they sent out their
iron rails, and erected their towering castles for the reception
of all the grain of the Northwest. Chicago railways cut St.
Louis off on the East, away down to Cairo, long ago ; cut off
the State of Missouri to the Missouri River, long ago, and
penetrated to the heart of Iowa and cut across Wisconsin to
Minnesota. Now they reach across Kansas by two lines — one
by the way of Cameron, Kansas City, and the Eastern Divi-
sion, Pacific; the other by the Central branch, Pacific, from
Atchison. They cross Nebraska by the Pacific Trunk to the
Rocky Mountains. They reach the Territory of Dacotah at
Sioux City.

"Chicago has kept her exchange-accounts even. The grain-
merchant gets a bill of exchange. This is transferred to the
Chicago dry-goods and grocery merchant. To every point from
whence comes grain to the Chicago market, Chicago dry-goods
and grocery merchants send bills of goods. Every Northwest-
ern town is visited by the Chicago merchants and orders are
solicited. Shipping arrangements are complete, transfers, if
any, are made with the utmost facility* The unceasing enter-
prise, the unfailing energy, of the Chicago merchant is wanting
among the merchants of St. Louis."

Kansas swarmed with Chicago "drummers," who crowded
out salesmen from other cities, so the Kansas papers said.
St. Louis raged at the Chicagoans as "blowhards/* Saliixa,
110

Kansas, said that everything its farmers bought, — wagons,
reapers, mowers, threshers, shovels, spades, hoes, cooking-
stoves — bore the stamp of a Chicago manufacturer or whole-
saler, "All the active business men here hail from Chicago,"
it reported.

The Missouri Republican, analyzing Chicago's gains in 567,
asked its readers : "Have these people greater enterprise than
ours ? They do not appear to have greater industry or greater
economy ; they haven't greater natural advantages or acquired
capital, yet wherever anything is to be done for the good of
Chicago, somebody is found to do it ; whether to build a rail-
road or an elevator, or a cattle-pen, or a bridge, or to prevent
others building them for the advantage of some other place,
there Chicago is, to do or to hinder the doing, as may be her
interest. Keen, sharp-sighted and long-sighted, quick and bold
to the verge of audacity, persistent and, the censorious say,
unscrupulous, they rush on, rejecting doubts and conquering
difficulties, to triumphant success and prosperity. Even just
now, here in our midst, she is thought to have emissaries, and
they of her most wily, seeking her advancement by hindering
our progress,"

Citizens of Illinois, according to the Jacksonville (Illinois)
Journal were given to wild boastings about the greatness of
Chicago when on trips outside the State, yet when they had
returned home, they invariably fell to abusing the city, cursing
it for the "many scamps and rascals hailing from there, who
go through the country cheating people." Chicago, this news-
paper observed, was not given to investing its money in sav-
ings-banks, but in new enterprises.

In 1868 the Missouri Republican was charging that a
$3,000,000 fire in Chicago was criminal, "selling out to the fire-
insurance companies." That year the tonnage on the Mis-
sissippi River was 1,086,320, while Chicago's lake-traffic was
2,588,570 tons ; Chicago led St. Louis in wool-receipts by 400
per cent, and in grain alniost as much.

"Chicago's superiority in shoes and boots was demonstrated

111

during the war," said the lake "boosters/' pointing out that
in 1867 the city had three thousand workers in that trade.
Chicago was turning out one farm-wagon for every seven
minutes in a working day. Melodeons and pianos were made
on a large scale. A watch-company at Elgin was announcing
that soon it would produce fifty watches a day. Over 600,-
000,000 feet of lumber had been sold in the city in 1866.
Ready-made houses, churches, court houses, hen-houses, were
shipped widely. Chicago's streets were as crowded as New
York's, it was said, and nothing exhibited in the Eastern me-
tropolis was missing from Chicago's show-windows. In the
whole city there was not one tenement house. Workmen owned
or rented houses. Commercial colleges were clogged with stu-
dents, and the city's business offices were glutted with "white
collar" men who couldn't find jobs. This was the city's only
idle class. "In all the Western country," a proverb ran, "the
richer a man is, the harder he toils."

Parton the historian thought that Chicago ladies giggled
less than New York ladies during musicals, but that Chica-
goans, as a rule, prepared meals badly and bolted their food.
"Chicago has the pick of the best food and nothing remains
but to learn how to cook it," he observed, noting how the rail-
roads cascaded supplies in upon the town.

Amusements, so meager during the war, flourished in the
joyous reaction. Baseball, capturing the nation, made Chicago
the scene of a gigantic tournament in 1865, fifty-four clubs
competing. Opera in English was given at the Academy of
Music, and in '68 there were, all told, sixteen weeks of grand
opera. Literary magazines rose and fell.

When one of the city's many schemes for turning the canal
into a passageway for large ships went wrong, St, Louis
crowed in its Missouri Democrat of May 1, 1868:

"Chicago, that Babylon of houses that fall down, located
on a flat along that lake-shore, which was to become the one
and only great commercial city of This World, if not of an-
other as well, and the iron arms of which were stretched out

in all directions, reaching after trade to support its fast horses,
faster men, falling houses, and fallen women, has at this
present moment a touch of the 'blues.' Chicago is unhappy.
Neither fast horses nor any other fast creature has power to
charm away the melancholy which overshadows with its dark
wings the depressed spirit of the Chicago merchant."

St. Louis was sending grain down the Mississippi River for
England, and thought it saw itself as Chicago's master in this
field.

"Beware, 0 Chica-geese !", jeered the Democrat. "That river
dries up in summer. It freezes up in winter. Your canal will
be of no use to you, for it will send all your dealers to St. Louis
to buy iron and goods of foreign manufacture, imported di-
rectly by river. . . . Those houses of yours are built of re-
markably slender splinters, 0 philosophers of the lake school!"

The hoped-for rivalry did not develop, however, and soon
St. Louis was turning to an ambition that, though equally
fruitless, was more logical, resolving, through its Common
Council, to have itself, instead of Washington, made the capital
of the nation.

"I wish I could go to America if only to see that Chicago,"
said Bismarck in 1870 to the American hero, General Sheridan,
who was visiting with the German army as it riddled the French
forces of the second Napoleon. Queen Victoria and Carlyle
were also reported in Chicago to have expressed similar desires.

It was a sight for wondering eyes, indeed, this boom-city,
as it flowered in 1871. Stores, hotels, theaters, crowded between
State, Adams and the river, an area three-quarters of a mile
square, with property valued at $1,000 a front-foot. Outside
this district, the city sprawled in alternating pastures and
rows of houses north to Fullerton, west to Crawford and south
to Thirty-ninth Street. From the Court House, business blocks
ran fairly solid two miles in the three directions.

A mile north along the lake on the "Kinzie addition" lived

113

the first families in "all the graciousness and repose of an old
aristocracy/5 as the London Daily News put it. Crowding onto
Michigan Avenue south by the lake-shore were rising the homes
of the "new rich" living, with some of the more ancient families
to encourage them, "in princely structures of marble, that vied,
both in architectural beauty and internal adornment, with the
most ornate edifices of Europe." Hyde Park to the south,
Lakeview to the north, were the most aristocratic suburbs.

West of LaSalle lived the workers, among the clanging
machine-shops and foundries, in a district that was spreading
north and south swiftly.

- Magnificent, for the times, were the hotels, the office-build-
ings, the huge retail stores— notably the Potter Palmer struc-
ture at State and Washington, which Field, and Leiter were
renting at $1,000 a week, the city calling it the "most splendid
commercial structure of the world." Twenty-five big young
banks, theaters — Crosby's Opera House with 2,500 seats, and
bridges, twenty-seven of which now spanned the river, with
200,000 people crossing a day.

"The golden-crowned, glorious Chicago, the Queen of the
North and the West," sang Will Carleton, better known for
his "Over the Hill to the Poorhouse."

The seventeen grain-elevators, holding 6,500,000 bushels,
were a crown, true enough, for the whole Northwest, linking
the railroads with the ships that came to the fourteen miles of
river-wharves. All along the river stood the coalyards, the
gigantic warehouses, wholesale storage-buildings, distilleries,
flour mills, while beyond, planing-mills droned and factories
clanged. Produce and materials received in the city during
1870 had been worth more than $260,000,000.

More important to Chicago's reputation for daring- and
originality was its success in making the Chicago River run
backward. The city slapped its thighs and bragged that it
had made Nature reverse herself. Who but a Chicagoan would
think of making water run uphill?

In reality the city was only putting on a brave face to hide

its disappointment over an ironic situation. For the great feat
had not been accomplished in the name of commercial conquest
so much as of sanitation. The city had outgrown the system
by which its sewage was pumped up into the canal, and, in
'67, work was begun on the old "deep cut" plan by which the
continental divide was to be lowered so that Garlic Creek might
have a gravity flow through the canal to the Illinois River. On
July 18, 1871, the new channel was opened, and Lake Michi-
gan, after all, sent waters into the warm Gulf of Mexico, but
with a traffic how different from that which men across two
centuries had visioned. Instead of the phantom ships of the
sea, which men, since Joliet, had watched sailing down the
dream route to the South, there now went only sewage.

"In every sphere of exertion these Western men improve
upon Eastern models and methods," wrote James Parton in
describing the event. The "improvement," however, was ques-
tionable, for the lake, at times, was too low to flush the city's
refuse down the canal. Also, to complicate matters, William B.
Ogden and John Wentworth dug a ditch through their swamp
acreage near the mouth of the canal, and loosed torrents which
frequently choked the waterway, forcing the Chicago River
to stand motionless and odorous. So, after a few months, the
city turned again back to the pumps and for twenty years the
hybrid system of drainage went on, sometimes by gravity,
sometimes by force.

Overshadowing the river now, as they had already over-
shadowed the canal, were the railroads — two union depots
standing in the city. Six bridges over the river had been built
by the railroads. From the North, as far as Lake Superior
mines, came the Chicago and Northwestern and the Chicago,
Milwaukee and St. Paul. From the West, over the old Galena
and Chicago Union right of way, came the Iowa division of the
Northwestern — tapping the Great Pacific, and thus strange
commerce from China and Japan.

A little to the south came in the Rock Island and Pacific,
bringing Pacific trade, too, by way of Council Bluffs. In from

115

the Southwest ran the Burlington and Quincy, with Denver
ores, Texas steers, Missouri mules. Up from the South came the
Illinois Central, with the trade of the Red River and limitless
Mississippi River valleys. From the East four roads came
disputing, the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis, the Pitts-
burgh and Fort Wayne, the Lake Shore, once the Michigan
Southern, and the Michigan Central. Another, the Grand
Trunk, in '71 was nearly completed to Port Huron. Thirteen
trunk lines the city counted, with 10,000 miles of track con-
tributing.

In Chicago, this dramatic year, was a little factory destined
to fatten Chicago and its railroads beyond estimate, the shop
where George M. Pullman was making "palace cars." He was
that same George M. Pullman who had come on from New
York in ?57 to raise Chicago's big buildings. Coming West he
had lain awake on the train between Buffalo and Westfield,
finding it impossible to sleep in the narrow pigeonhole which,
in that time, passed for a berth. Some day he would better
that, and when he had his house-raising done in Chicago, he set
to work. From the Chicago and Alton he got two old cars in
1858, and on these he experimented, introducing the upper
berth. Being originally a cabinet-maker, he finally produced
in 1864 a $20,000 model car, "The Pioneer," that was hand-
somely finished, elaborately frescoed, upholstered, carpeted —
and comfortable. Passengers could hope now for at least some
sleep. By 1867, when the Pullman Palace Car Company was
incorporated, the sleepers had been adopted by Western rail-
roads, the New York Central following suit. Dining-cars were
added the following year, and in ?69 de luxe trains traveled
from Chicago to San Francisco.

Transportation around the city itself, as well as in and out

of it, was as good as horsecars could make it. William Ogden

had tunneled under the river at Washington Street to let

traffic escape the horrors of "bridging." Arrogant lake-traffic

116

kept the pivot bridges open much of the time, the people
standing in dense throngs at the open street-ends waiting,
choking in freighter-smoke, and cursing. For appointments
across the river, to be sure of arriving on time, people had to
start an hour early.

Crowds on all the streets — 306,605 people in the whole city,
half of them foreign-born, some 25,000 of them German, almost
as many Irish — a church-going population of 150,000 a Sun-
day— 27,023 children in school. Of the 156 churches, 25 were
Catholic, 21 Methodist, 20 Baptist, 19 Presbyterian, 5 Jewish,
the rest of scattering denominations.

Parks north, west, and south occupied 36 square miles, and
with connecting boulevards were regarded, as they were later,
as "the finest in the world."

The University of Chicago, built on land given by Stephen
A. Douglas out near 34th and Cottage Grove, had "the largest
and best refracting-telescope in the world." The Academy of
Science and the Historical Society were the only fireproof
structures in the city. There was no public library in 1871.
The downtown section bristled with hotels. Conventions jammed
them. Theodore Thomas had begun to play symphonic music.
McVicker's Theatre had been rebuilt, and Crosby's Opera
House remodeled in grandiose splendor. Its lobbies were heavy
with art. The Academy of Design displayed over 300 paint-
ings by American artists, among them Rothermel's famous
"Battle of Gettysburg."

Chicago, which the world in 1870 more than ever called "the
wickedest on earth," said that Cicero, a town on its western
limits, was the wickedest spot in Cook County, a denunciation
which Chicago would repeat often enough in the 1920s when
its own gunmen, anxious to escape the jurisdiction of its po-
lice, maintained elaborate hangouts in this same Cicero, terror-
izing the law-abiding citizens of that town. "A more lawless,
uncivilized, uncontrollable settlement does not exist in the
whole country," so the Tribune described it. "The greater por-
tion of it is peopled with a set of riotous, untamable, half-

117

savage rowdies." Its hoodlums burned the houses of respectable
citizens who objected to their infernal din, and murders among
them were frequent.

On February 25, 1870, there occurred a horsewhipping that
gave the city national notoriety as a wild town. Lydia Thomp-
son, audacious burlesque actress of "Black Crook" fame,
clashed with Wilbur F. Storey, harsh and able editor of the
Chicago Times — Storey who is reputed to have said that a
newspaper's duty was to print the news and raise hell. Lydia
had brought her scandalizing company of "Blondes" to Cros-
by's Opera House, where their bpre bosoms and hips, out-
lined in tights, stirred the wrath of the Puritans. Storey's
Times began by accusing the girls of "capering lasciviously
and uttering gross indecencies" and concluded by urging Miss
Thompson, as little better than a strumpet, to leave town. The
fiery actress waylaid Storey outside his home on Wabash Ave-
nue and whipped him briskly.

On Dearborn Street, "Newspaper Row," loomed the four-
story skyscraper of the Tribune, which had been founded in
'47. It introduced the first telegraphic news-service to the city
in '49 and consolidated with Deacon Bross' Democratic Press
in '55, with Joseph Medill as one of its four managers. The
Journal, the Evening Post, the Republican, the Evening Mail,
the Staats-Zeitung and the Volks Zeitung were the other
papers, aggregating 78,500 copies daily and sending weekly
and tri-weekly editions to the surrounding States.

Merchant princes, railroad kings, gamblers, prostitutes,
toilers, art-collectors — not many, but a few — Theodore
Thomas and his orchestra, musicians, actors, more bookstores
in proportion to population than in any other American city —
so it was claimed.

"The rich and voluptuous city,
The beauty-thronged, mansion-decked city,
Gay Queen of the North and the West/'

rhapsodized Will Carleton.
118

Elias Colbert, the historian, thought the city had become
"another Pompeii in luxury, if not in licentiousness. " Property
was valued at $620,000,000.

The Tribune, noting six or seven new manufacturing-enter-
prises arriving to furnish jobs for two thousand new workers,
noting the five new railroads looking for a way into the city,
and the subdividers5 mad way with suburban buyers, declared
in warning irony, "Everybody seems to be swelled up with big
schemes."

Sharper irony lay in its declaration of September 10, 1871,
that the city held "miles of fire-traps, pleasing to the eye, look-
ing substantial, but all sham and shingles. Walls have been run
up a hundred feet high and but a single brick in thickness."

Pompous, flimsy cornices of wood or iron painted to look
like stone hung dangerously over the streets, frequently fall-
ing. Most of the showy marble fronts were thin, weak walls.

Among and behind the hastily built commercial palaces were
rotting shanties where the poor and the criminal roosted.
Flimsy boarding-houses and hovels shouldered "magnificent
retail emporiums55 and fashionable homes. South of Monroe
Street from lake to river were the ramshackle houses and rook-
eries of the underworld. There was no fire-law observed. Land-
lords, through bribery and political power, kept fire-traps in
the heart of the city. Anything was forgiven if it made money.
Prosperity and progress ruled.

Westward were acres of frame houses, barns and cowsheds.
Chicago was a pine town. Lumber had been cheap and plenti-
ful, and it was quickly turned into a profit-making house or
store. The city had 60,000 buildings, of which 40,000 were
wholly of wood, only a handful of the remainder were fire-
proof. Roofs were made of felt and tar, or of shingles.

"Chicago is a city of everlasting pine, shingles, shams,
veneers, stucco, and putty," repeated the Tribune.

Fires were frequent, but dismissed readily in the pioneer
way, They were to be expected. Insurance would always come
within a few dollars of replacing a building. Chicago's mind

119

was on conquest, not conservation. It was now, more than ever,
"the booster city."

Of those five original men of vision, Ogden, Wentworth, Mc-
Cormick, Bross, and Wright, all in '71 have been made to
seem conservative by the rush of events. Their optimism has
not been strong enough. Their prophecies have been so quickly
outdone. Their dreams of what might be are dull compared
to what has happened.

Ogden is "railroad king," still the city's most prominent
man, but smaller now in the crush of new builders. Long John
Wentworth has been out of Congress since '67; it has been
fourteen years since he was mayor that one wild year when
he served Ogden — and perhaps the city — so well in despoiling
the underworld. Now he sits on boards of directors, thinks up
reminiscences of the old days, gets ready to give bequests to
colleges, and looks at property, of which he owns more than
any man in Chicago. Few men in the history of the world
have seen what he has seen — log huts in the mud changing to
a metropolis, trappers giving way to millionaires, canoes to
railroads. As he stares at the huge railroad station on the
lake-front, he remembers the Fort Dearborn soldiers' coffins
sticking out of the sand banks there.

McCormick has shown his reaper before crowned heads of
Europe and now makes and sells 10,000 a year. Much of his
profits have been spent in the close, hard patent-litigation for
which he is nationally known. The public does not know this,
and seeing that he is a millionaire assumes thai he has ground
vast wealth out of the poor farmer. In reality, McCormick had
made his money in real estate. The people call him a hard,
ruthless man, forgetting what his reaper has done to save the
Union. Labor troubles are ahead of McCormick — bad ones.

"Deacon" Bross has been Lieutenant-Governor of Illinois
from J65 to '69 and, throughout the decade, too busy with
Abolition and war work to issue his rousing broadsides as of
120

old. Nevertheless he has found time to carry out John Stephen
Wright's teachings in another line. For ten years he has been
the city's "greeter," doing to others what Wright did to him in
1848. Whenever a visitor of distinction comes to Chicago it is
the hearty voice and proud finger of the Deacon that point
out the glories of the city. When he toots the civic horn visitors
hear stirring music.

John Stephen Wright, whose reaper has served him dif-
ferently than McCormick's has served him, is in ?71 "boosting5*
ahead as though both Chicago real estate and business had
not wrecked him. He still has St. Louis by the nose, and cries
the "Manifest Destiny" of front-footage in the Garden City.
He will keep on so to the end — a man in love with a town.
But his great days are done.

The pioneers have all seen their best days — all but Bross.

The Deacon has one last — and most thunderous — broadside
of "booster" shot in his locker. He will let the world have it
in the days after the great fire, which is now at hand.

CHAPTER XI

T was Sunday night in the home of Patrick O'Leary, and the
small frame dwelling at 137 De Koven Street held music.
O'Leary, his wife, and five children were in bed, but the two
front rooms were rented to Patrick McLaughlin, the fiddler,
who with his family and friends was entertaining his wife's
"greenhorn'5 cousin, newly arrived from Ireland. During the
evening one or another of the five young male guests went out
for a half -gallon of beer. Otherwise nobody left the house —
so the McLaughlins always said.

"Before God," said Catherine McLaughlin when called to
testify about the evening's events, "I didn't cook a thing. We
didn't eat anything and I didn't cook anything. Nobody went
out to get milk for punch. I never had such a thing in my
life."

There was mystery about that milk a little later, when the
whole city of Chicago, the whole country of the United States
of America and much of Europe was asking who had milked
Mrs. O'Leary's cow. Many legends of the famous animal have
lived in Chicago's history. %

One story in the Neighborhood was that the McLaughlins,
along between eight and nine o'clock that evening, decided to
have either a milk punch or an oyster stew, and that some
18*

member of the party had visited tlte^ow^EicETthe O'Leary's
stabled in a shed at the rear.

Another rumor was that Mrs. O'Leary herself had risen
from bed to get the milk. This she denied, saying that she
hadn't gone near the animal after giving it its regular five-
o'clock milking that afternoon. She and her husband and chil-
dren were in bed, she declared, and resting in peace, when their
neighbor from over the way, Daniel Sullivan, the drayman,
came knocking at the door to say that their barn was afire.
All Pat O'Leary knew, in addition to what his wife had said,
was that if they had called him earlier he could have saved the
cow.

All Daniel Sullivan could say was that at 9.25 he had
seen fire in O'Leary's barn and had cried the alarm as loud
as he could, which was very loud indeed, since God had given
him strong lungs. He had rushed for the stable to save the
cow, but his wooden leg had caught between two loose boards
and he had barely escaped with his life and a calf whose hair
was on fire.

That was about the sum total of what the official investiga-
tion discovered concerning the ill-timed milking of Mrs.
O'Leary's animal, and to this day it is not certain that anybody
gave the famous bovine a second milking that evening. A
broken lamp was found among the ashes of the stable a couple
of days later, and gave rise to the legend that the cow, either
resenting the lateness of the milker's intrusion or her — or his —
sharp finger-nails, had kicked over the lamp and started the
Great Chicago Fire.

Little time anybody had for hunting clues or fixin
bilities that night of Sunday, October 8? 1871. By ten o'clock
the fire had spread from O'Leary's across? the West Side in two
swaths so far and wide that all the engine^ in town were clang-
ing on the streets, and the court-house bdl, in the downtown
section, was booming wildly, unceasingly.

Many things had operated to give the flames such headway
in so short a time. The neighborhood of its origin was of pine
shanties. The watchman on the City Hall tower had misjudged
its location and had called for a fire-company a mile and a
half out of the way, thus causing ruinous delay. A terrific
southwest wind was blowing. Furthermore, the fire-companies
had been exhausted by a $750,000 fire on the West Side the
day before, and many of their workers, following the custom of
American firemen in that time, had celebrated the defeat of the
earlier blaze by getting drunk. All Summer Chicago's firemen
had been going day and night — thirty fires between the last
day of September and the 5th of October — and they needed
relaxation.

Fires had been bad that Summer across the whole West and
Northwest. The worst drought in history was on the land.
The leaves had fallen in July. Only an inch of rain had come
down between July and October. Rivers had turned to gulches
of dust ; live stock died around dry mudholes from Minnesota
to Texas. Locomotive sparks set the prairies blazing. Forest
fires ate down to the edge of the plains and touched off the
tinder-grass. Train-crews came into Chicago with eyebrows
singed.

Still, Chicago, the city of "shams and shingles," sitting
on a powder-box, had thought that it would never burn. Fires
might devastate little neighborhoods, but not the great city.

So on the night of October 8th it listened to the fire-bells
and said, "Oh, it's just another fire on the West Side."

But before ten o'clock had struck, all Chicago was on the
streets, heading for the river, for the sight was out of the
ordinary. Flames miles wide and a hundred feet high were
lashing their way downtown on the southern gale that kept
starting little fires blocks ahead of the inferno. By 10.20 blaz-
ing brands were falling on roofs of the big stores north of the
river, and clerks and bystanders were dancing upon them like
red Indians. Owners of downtown buildings began throwing
water on roofs and walls.

Even then, the crowds felt sure that the flames would die
when they struck the blackened area — four blocks wide — that
had been left vacant by the fire of the night before. But with
the force of a hundred and fifty acres of burning houses and
factories behind it, the blaze jumped the cinder-path at a
bound, licked up the grain-elevators by the Chicago River,
and fell upon the Union Station.

From the West Side crowds now poured into the downtown
section, jamming the bridges and threatening the tunnel with
panic. Two fire engines had been surrendered to the flames.
Sailors threw water on their ships in the river, tugs hauled
manfully at vessels in the confusion, cries rose at times higher
than the thunder of the fire itself.

The river would stop it! Chicago expected nothing else.

But at twelve o'clock a blazing board rode the wind over
the river and settled on a shanty-roof at Adams and Franklin,
one third of a mile from any burning building. As if it were
shavings, the shanty disappeared, and its neighboring hovels
as well. Flames now swept northeast across the business section
while, in little sorties, streams of fire raced ahead of the con-
flagration, darting up alleys "as though through a field of
straw." Parmelee's $80,000 stables lit up Franklin and
Jackson as though they had been soaked in gasoline. Conley's
"Patch," that home of sin, was gone in what seemed but a
second, its wretched women and children fleeing, tripping,
screaming, smothering, some of them dying, its prostitutes rac-
ing like mad, many of them in their shifts, its desperate men
helping their families and women or breaking for the rich
harvests of loot that lay ahead.

Back over the West Side bridges came the fire-engines,
frantic to save the more valuable property of the business
section. Ruthlessly they crushed through masses of fugitives.
The gas-works blew up with a sound like the crack of doom.
In moments when the wind whiffed the fire back for a second,
the court-house bell could be heard at its hopeless clangor.

125

Mayor Roswell B. Mason dashed for the City Hall and
began to dictate telegrams begging help from neighboring
cities. La Salle's "fireproof" buildings began to pop and crack
in the awful heat, cornices fell, false facades peeled off, roofs
of tar-and-felt broke into flame. Among the lodging-houses
that filled the upper floors of many business structures, women
threw children down to the firemen, sometimes falling back
into the flames. Expressmen, anybody who owned a horse —
there were immense numbers of the animals in the city — dashed
about threatened districts demanding exorbitant sums of cash
$25, $50, $100 — to rescue household property or a mer-
chant's trunk of papers.

At 1 P.M. the court house was afire and three hundred and
fifty prisoners were loosed from jail. With elation they fell
upon, a jewelry-store and looted it.

From north of the river, where the flames now seemed certain
to come, people, stopping in their flight, could count over one
hundred large downtown buildings blazing at once. The average
structure of stone, iron, and brick lasted five minutes.

Great blankets of flame, detached from any particular con-
flagration, swept across the sky. Except around the mountains
of coal by the river, there seemed to be little smoke, observers
thought. One theory was that the flames consumed it. Walls
thudded to the ground. Every street was a blow-pipe. Iron
columns melted like butter. Everything was consumed. No
piece of wood, however charred, was to be found in the wake
of the fire. Iron, bronze, gold, silver, brass, turned to puddles,
but wood, far down in foundations, disappeared utterly. Car-
wheels were destroyed, many safes consumed. Several hundred
tons of pig iron, standing two hundred and fifty feet from any
building or inflammable* material, melted into one liquid mass.
Gas seemed to form ahead of the flames and to fill the build-
ings, so that deafening explosions took place when the fire
reached them. The pier out into the lake blazed. Two miles
126

from shore, the crib-tender, almost stifling from the heat-
waves, barely saved his wooden pumping-shed by incessant
dousings of water.

The wind from Chicago was so hot the next afternoon at
Holland, Michigan, a hundred miles away across the great cool
lake, that men had to lie down behind ditches and hedges to
let the scorching blasts go by.

The hoodlums whose dens had been burned, the vagrants and
unfortunates who had nothing to lose, the criminals who saw
chance for gain, all swarmed upon shops and stores, taking
what they wanted. To their number were added weaklings who
went mad with horror and otherwise staid citizens who got
drunk in desperation. Saloons kept open ahead of the fire,
scooping in silver until the flames were overhead.

"The rogues smashed windows reckless of the severe wounds
inflicted on their naked hands," said one observer, "and with
bloody fingers rifled impartially till, shelf, and cellar, fighting
viciously for the spoils. Women, hollow-eyed and brazen-faced,
moved here and there stealing, scolding shrilly, and laughing
with one another at some particularly 'splendid' gush of flame
or 'beautiful3 falling-in of a roof."

Alexander Frear, a New York alderman, caught in the holo-
caust, remembered what he saw — Wabash Avenue choked with
crowds and bundles, "valuable oil paintings, books, pets,
musical instruments, toys, mirrors, and bedding were trampled
under foot. Goods from stores had been hauled out and had
taken fire, and the crowd, breaking into a liquor-establishment,
was yelling with the fury of demons. A fellow standing on a
piano declared that the fire was the friend of the poor man.
... In this chaos were hundreds of children, wailing and cry-
ing for their parents. One little girl in particular I saw, whose
golden hair was loose down her back and caught fire. She ran
screaming past me and somebody threw a glass of liquor upon
her, which flared up and covered her with a blue flame."

On Lake Street, Frear saw a man loading a truck with loot
from Shay's "magnificent dry-goods store."

127

"Some one with a revolver shouted to him not to drive away
or he would fire, to which he replied, Tire and be damned/
and the man put his pistol in his pocket again. I saw a raga-
muffin on the Clark Street bridge, who had been killed by a
marble slab thrown from a window, with white gloves upon his

hands."

Bundles on the heads of fleeing women were often blazing.
Little children, sometimes alone, sometimes hand in hand with
others for company, wandered sobbing while mothers, in dis-
traction, rushed in and out of danger calling for them.

Everybody seemed to be yelling at the top of his or her voice.
Frear saw people pushed off bridges into the river to drown,
while boat-crews fought to keep crowds from clambering onto
their decks.

Rough-looking men carried strange women and children to
safety and went back into danger for more. The police saved
lives everywhere, firemen dashed into the flames and carried
out unconscious persons. Horses broke out of stables or away
from drivers and tore frenziedly through the streets. Their
screams as they perished in glowing stables ripped through the
steady din. Rats, smoked out from their burrows under houses
and wooden sidewalks, died squealing under foot on the main
streets.

So tremendous was the wind that firemen, facing it, could
get water no more than ten feet past the nozzles of their
hose. Streams would not carry above second stories. Fire-engine
after fire-engine was caught by the flames. Companies were
separated from their officers. The department was gone.

In the small hours of the night the flames jumped the river
to the north and went through that section of 75,000 people
as fast as a man could run. Wooden headstones were burned in
the graveyard, stone vaults cracked open, exposing skeletons*

The distraught citizenry ran ahead of the fire, edging east-
128

ward, when it could, toward the lake-front, the cemetery, and
Lincoln Park. Women's dresses flamed. Sick people, borne on
mattresses, stretchers, and in chairs, were knocked to the
ground and trampled. Some fugitives, blind with fear, ran into
blazing alleys and perished. Old people went under in the
frantic crowds of the streets. Housewives, rushing back into
their homes for some last cherished possession, were burned
alive. The Chicago Historical went, taking with it city records
of incalculable value, and the original draft of the Emancipa-
tion Proclamation, which Abraham Lincoln had given to the
Sanitary Fair in Civil War days.

On the lake-front thousands took refuge far from any build-
ing that might burn. But here the heat and the snowstorm of
embers were torturing. Men buried their wives and children
in the sand, with a hole for air, splashed water onto the sand-
blanket, then dashed into the water to stand chin-deep, breath-
ing through handkerchiefs. Babies and weaklings here and
there were smothered in the heat. The city water-works fell,
robbing the fire-fighters of their last ammunition.

Meanwhile the flames worked eastward through the business
section. Field and Leiter's store, for all that its employees had
hoped to save it by pouring water down its marble front, went
with a roar. Newspaper Row fell, cheating the Tribune's re-
porters and compositors out of the edition that they had almost
ready for the street.

In the phantasmagoria men rushed about screaming,
"Where is General Sheridan? Why don't he do something?"

"Phil" Sheridan, fresh from the full fame of his Civil War
exploits, was in Chicago commanding that section of the War
Department. He must be in town somewhere. He had ridden
twenty miles to save the Union army at Winchester ; why didn't
he save Chicago ?

Sheridan was working with the tools he knew — gunpowder.
Securing a supply, he fell to blowing up buildings in the path
of the fire, and the first blasts as he swung into work at Har-
rison and Congress sent a belated wave of confidence over those

189

Chicagoans who thought that part of the downtown^ section
might yet be saved. Gunpowder was as useless as anything else,
as it turned out, for the flames whisked across the vacant spots
without a pause.

All day Monday the fire kept to its wind-driven task of
finishing the business section and the North Side, and by night
only two structures stood in the first section and only four in
the last.

On the Sands, by the river, where Long John Wentworth
had cleared another tract of Ogden's land for him in 1857,
were now penned thousands of rich and poor, squatting among
their bundles, trying to breathe in the suffocating heat, edging
out from tinder the hoofs of herds of horses which had been
led to this empty spot by their owners. It was estimated that"
some 30,000 persons were cowering among the smouldering
headstones in the cemetery by Lincoln Park.

Dimly, on Tuesday, the ruined city looked at itself. Three
and one-half square miles of its area had been blackened;
98,500 people had been burned out of their homes; 17,450
buildings had been destroyed; $300,000,000 worth of property
had been turned into vapor. In the business section everything
was gone between lake and river north of a line from Congress
Street to Wells and Polk; 3,650 buildings, including 1,600
stores, 28 hotels, 60 manufacturing establishments, and no one
knew how many shanties had been burned. The loss of the
hovels and the upstairs lodging-houses over the "mercantile
palaces" had thrown 21,800 downtown residents out of home.
Within the city limits on the North Side were 2,533 acres, over
1,450 of them now ashes — 13,300 of the 13,800 buildings in
ruins. On the West Side 500 buildings had been consumed,
2,250 people had been burned out.

Of the dead, 250 were counted. Authorities agreed that the
total number must be far higher, since the flames had struck
130

like lightning into the hovels where vagrants and night-birds
hid. John McDevitt, billiard champion, had wandered, tipsy,
into the flames. Henry J. Ullman, a banker, had returned
once too often to snatch currency from his safe, and failed to
reappear.

Of the 341 fire-insurance companies hit by the catastrophe,
57 suspended business, knocked out by losses. Chicago, trying
to collect on $88,634,022 in policies, never realized more than
half of the amount.

On Tuesday sightseers poured into town, among them hun-
dreds of criminals from neighboring cities, avid for pillage.
Past them, as they came in, went droves of ruined men and
their families, going out. Back East went many a business man
.who had been drawn to Chicago by its prosperity, and who now
was through with a place that collapsed so quickly.

But among the emigrants was one man whose eyes burned
as keenly under their shaggy brows as ever they had flashed
in the boom-days of the city — Deacon Bross, bearing on his
shoulders the symbol of Chicago's hope — the old "booster,"
heading for the money marts of the East to get cash and to
cry "Chicago Resurgendam" to the world.

His home was gone, his fortune, too, in the Tribune's de-
struction, his family, like the rest of the populace, at the mercy
of "cutthroats and vagabonds who had flocked in like vultures
from every point of the compass," as he described the situation,
but the Deacon could not stay. He was off to refinance his
paper — and the city. His heart was booming like a big bass
drum under the thumpings of his gospel — "Chicago and Mani-
fest Destiny."

Like Fort Dearborn, the Garden City was burned, the Queen
of the Lakes consumed, but as Bross, arriving in New York,
pictured the situation to the newspaper reporters and Cham-
ber-of-Commerce crowds, there was no opportunity in the
whole world quite so tempting that minute to a smart capitalist
as an investment in Chicago.

131

CHAPTER XII

I Jnw>r Wabash Avenue, the morning after the great fire,
strolled John Stephen Wright, who, by all human expecta-
tion, should have been at some friend's home, prostrate with
grief.

But here he came walking among the ashes as he had once
walked through the mud, looking not so much at the shambles
about him as at the dream-city that forever floated before him.
Chicago had always been an enchanting mirage to him. When-
ever the city had caught up to him, his imagination had already
pushed on to vision new glories for the future.
"* This morning he was still himself, undaunted, untouched
by the calamity, as Chicago quickly discovered. At the corner
of Wabash and Congress, he came upon the publisher of his
"booster" books, D. H. Horton, sitting in dejection upon a
dray. Horton was ruined, and in bitter sarcasm he asked,
"Well, Wright, what do you think NOW of the future of
Chicago?"

Serenely, tolerantly the old prophet answered, "I will tell
you what it is. Chicago will have more men, more money, more
business, within five years than she would have had without
the fire."

And with that he passed on through the wreckage like an
132

evangelist who sings in his heart hymns to the beautiful city
of God.

When word of his forecast had spread widely through the
town, men laughed bitterly, saying that Wright had always
been crazy, but never so crazy as now. Technically they were
correct, for the old man's mind had begun to go. Within a
few months he was to be locked up in a Pennsylvania insane
asylum, and within three years the city's biggest men were to
be carrying him to a Chicago graveyard while his disciple
Bross declared, "He lived a generation ahead of his time."

The fire, which in the minds of many had ruined Chicago for-
ever, proved in the end to have advertised the city's prowess
most amazingly.

For weeks — months — afterward, everybody talked about
Chicago and as the magnitude of the disaster dawned upon the
nation, it was perceived how enormous the city had been. Read-
ing the statistics of loss, America was impressively informed of
what incredible amounts of business Chicago had handled.
People who had only dimly realized the sudden rise of the city
now appreciated how it had come to dominate the great North-
west, and how, when it was rebuilt, it would do the thing all
over again.

Chicago's fire was one of the great events of the nineteenth
century. Scores of books and pamphlets were written about it.
Lecturers with magic-lantern slides, showing the city before
and after the fire, for years reaped a harvest from curious
rustics. Peasants in Central Europe, in China, all over the
world, heard of the disaster. Foreign countries, in the weeks
immediately following the news, gave $600,000 to relieve the
sufferers.

Among the armies of sightseers who streamed into town to
gaze at the ruins were midwestern village storekeepers destined
to resolve, before leaving, that Chicago wholesalers, rather

133

than New York merchants, should have their trade thereafter.
Among the telegrams of sympathy, grief, and condolence were
offers from Eastern firms of unlimited credit to Chicago busi-
ness men. New stocks of goods for the local merchants rolled
into the city, just behind the tons of food and clothing that
were given. Those "restless, often reckless, Yankees" of Chicago
had in the past appalled the Southern civilization of the Mis-
sissippi River Valley with their drive and brashness, yet they
had begot confidence in their ability to pay. They might be
coarse and "slick," but their credit was good.

"None of Chicago's rich men are rich by inheritance," was
said at the time, implying that what the city's business men
had lost in the fire was, after all, only an incident in the career
of self-made men to whom ups and downs were an old story.
Ten days after the fire almost all the Chicago banks, in one
makeshift building or another, were paying all demands in full.

Sympathy was as practical as it was immediate. The nation
not only succored Chicago, it set it up in business again.
By Tuesday morning fifty carloads of food and clothing ar-
rived— thirty-two hours after the outbreak of the fire. The
railroads, who owed Chicago a debt of gratitude, hauled sup-
plies free. The telegraph-companies carried without charge
pledges of money and requests for help. Milwaukee, forgetting
its old rivalry, had put three fire-engines into the fight on
Monday, and followed with carloads of provisions. By Monday
night St. Louis, all jealousy laid aside, had a train of supplies
on the way and eighty tons more waiting at the depot. In a
few days it had given Chicago $500,000. Cincinnati had raised
$160,000 by Monday's sunset. When mid-November had come,
$2,500,000 had been contributed by America and Europe. All
told, Chicago received $4,820,148.16, over $900,000 of it from
foreign donors.

Poems galore, poems noble, comic, sincere, extravagant,

were written about the stricken city. Clergymen made it the

subject of sermons for months, some saying that the heart of

humanity was bleeding, some that the fire had been God's way

134

of punishing the sins of the world, many declaring that God
had destroyed the wicked city even as He had laid the righteous
torch at the gates of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Rev. Gran-
ville Moody, Cincinnati Methodist, attributed the calamity to
the fact that Chicago had recently given a majority vote
against the closure of the saloons on the Sabbath.

"It is retributive judgment on a city that has shown such
devotion in its worship of the Golden Calf," he preached, going
on to link Chicago to Babylon, to Tyre, to Pompeii, and to
Sodom and Gomorrah.

Memories of "Abolitionist Chicago" came to light in the
editorial view of the calamity as voiced by the Rushville (In-
diana) Democrat, Copperhead organ. God had stricken the
Northern city to avenge the "wanton" destruction which the
Union armies had visited upon the South during the Civil War,
so said the Hoosier village editor. When those twin monsters,
Sherman and Sheridan, had laid waste Georgia and Virginia,
Chicago, like the rest of the North, had exulted.

"The property destroyed in the South is estimated at over
one thousand millions," said the Indiana newspaper. "Chicago
has lost perhaps three hundred million dollars by the fire. The
fire in Chicago was the result of accident. The destruction of
property in the South was done purposely, by Northern sol-
diers, and compares exactly with the acts of the Goths and
Vandals. But we are living under a higher civilization. Chicago
did her full share in the destruction of the South. God adjusts
balances. Maybe with Chicago the books are now squared."

Down in New Orleans, the voice of the Mississippi River
spoke its ancient grudge against the lake metropolis, an editor
declaring :

"Despite the remarkable boldness and dash manifested by
Chicago in her outward evidences of prosperity, it was all seen
through a glamor of unsubstantiality. The rampant spirit of
speculation haunted all her operations. The growth of St.
Louis, on the other hand, though slower, was more sure and
solid. Gradually the trade of Chicago was being diverted

135

toward the nearer, the more accessible and larger market. This
was the condition of affairs when the fire-fiend came to sweep
the Lake City with his besom of destruction, inflicting a blow
from which she will scarcely recover in the present genera-
tion. ... „_ _ ,.

"Chicago will never be the Carthage of old. Its prestige
has passed away like that of a man who turns the downward
hill of life; its glory will be of the past, not of the present;
while its hopes, once so bright and cloudless, will be to the
end marred and blackened by the smoke of its fiery fate.^

Such provincial gloatings, however, were rare. St. Louis
itself joined in the general prophecy, made by newspapers from
the London Times to the smallest rural weekly of the prairies,
that Chicago would quickly regain her former glory. England,
in particular, was confident of the city's ability to recover.
British eyes had been focused on Chicago by Richard Cobden,
the statesman and political economist, whose imagination, years
before, had been kindled by the city's rise. "English school-
boys," he had protested, "are taught all about a trumpery
Attic stream called the Ilissus, but nothing of Chicago."

Deacon Bross' propaganda had been particularly effective
in England, glorifying as it did Chicago's friendship for
Canada, the city's destined use of the St. Lawrence River, and
wanner relations between the British steamers and the Chicago
grain-merchants.

This spirit spoke when news of Chicago's calamity reached
England. At the suggestion of Thomas Hughes, author of
Tom Brown at Rugby, the most distinguished British au-
thors gave books to launch a public library in the wrecked
city. Following the example of Tennyson, Browning, Darwin,
Kingsley, and other renowned Victorians, including the Queen
herself, the English public sent more than 8,000 volumes, which
the city used, in May, 1873, as a nucleus for its first public
library.

The Deacon's horn-blowing after the fire was directly effec-
tive upon public sentiment in the Eastern cities of the United
136

States, as well. It will be remembered that he struck off for the
Atlantic seaboard while the city was still smoking. Arriving in
New York as the first eye-witness of the catastrophe, he was
front-page news for days. Reporters swarmed about him and,
master publicist that he was, he gave them a story of the fire
that is perhaps the most vivid thing of the kind on record.
But every other sentence of his tale was a toot on the
"booster" horn, a promise of the city's rebirth. Bross seized
the opportunity to make hay while the sun of attention shone
upon him.

"Go to Chicago now," was his message. "Young men, hurry
there ! Old men, send your sons ! You will never again have such
a chance to make money."

Invited to address the New York Chamber of Commerce,
Bross poured into the ears of the capitalists not so much a
plea for help as a clarion call for them to invest quickly in
Chicago industry and grow rich.

"Thousands anxious to locate in this focus of Western com-
merce have been deterred from doing so for the reason that the
business in each department had become concentrated in com-
paratively few hands. There has not been for the last twenty
years so good a time for men of capital to start business in
Chicago as now. With few exceptions all can now start even
in the race for fame and fortune. The fire has leveled nearly
all distinctions.

"Now, therefore, is the time to strike. A delay of a year or
two will give an immense advantage to those who start at
once. ... A couple of months, at most, are all that is needed
to start business with the best prospects of success. Farmers,
merchants, and capitalists of the East who have sons whom
they wish to put in as partners with men of integrity and
business knowledge will find no opportunity like the one which
Chicago offers today.

"I tell you," he cried, "within five years Chicago's business
houses will be rebuilt, and by the year 1900 the new Chicago
will boast a population of a million souls. You ask me why?

137

Because I know the Northwest and the vast resources of its
broad acres. I know that the location of Chicago makes her
the center of this wealthy region and the market for all its
products. What Chicago has been in the past, she must become
in the future and a hundredfold more. She has only to wait
a few short years for the sure development of her 'manifest

destiny.' "

Back in Chicago, Joseph Medill, copartner of Bross in the
Tribune, had scrambled among the ruins, reassembled his staff
of reporters and printers, leased a job-printing plant out of
the fire-zone and on Wednesday, two days after the fire, was
screaming in an editorial :

"CHEER UP

"In the midst of a calamity without parallel in the
world's history, looking upon the ashes of thirty
years' accumulations, the people of this once beau-
tiful city have resolved that CHICAGO SHAM- RISE

AGAIN."

A Chicago realtor, W. D. Kerf oot, had put up a temporary
shack among the hot ashes, declaring that he was back in trade
with "all gone but wife, children and energy."

By November 18, a week after the fire, 5,497 temporary
structures were up and within five weeks from that date, over
200 imposing permanent buildings were rising. In the next
twelve months over 100,000 carpenters, teamsters, masons,
hod-carriers, workmen of all sorts, were busy on 10,000 new-
structures. The city that had spent years on jack-screws now
lived in a forest of derricks.

Fire-laws, building-regulations, were stricter. False fronts
were condemned. Houses were narrower and taller* Estates
138

of first families were split up into slimmer lots. Business
blocks were excessively heavy with stone and mortar. Joseph
Medill was elected mayor on a "fireproof" ticket. Railroads
erected larger and finer depots.

The Northwest which, by the middle '70s, had tripled its
population since 1857, built more than half as many miles of
railway in 1872 alone as it had built in the ten years preced-
ing. Over the rails there came to Chicago in 1873 fifty per
cent, more grain than had come in 1869.

The Union Stockyards had come through the fire unharmed,
and to them in ?72 rolled almost twice as many hogs as had
been received in 1870. By 1878 the figure had again doubled,
and by 1881 had mounted to over 5,000,000 hogs per annum.
And with this gain went, concurrently, Chicago's invitation to
the world to witness the exquisite manner in which the hog-
butchering for the nation was performed. An apotheosis to
Chicago's genius in packing, made by S. B. Ruggles, the New
York orator-politician, was regarded by Chicagoans as a thing
that everybody ought to know by heart:

"The manifest destiny and high office of this splendid gran-
ary [the Northwest], of which Chicago is the brilliant center,
stands out as plain as the sun in heaven. It is unmistakably
marked by the finger of God on these widespread lands and
waters that it is to be our special duty to feed not only our-
selves of this New World alone, but that venerable moss-backed
fatherland, to carry abundant food and with it the means of
higher civilization and refinement, and that too in the truest
Christian spirit, to the overcrowded but under-fed European
Christendom to which we owe our common origin. . . .

"Let us talk of the glorious West as a gigantic hog-pen.
The hog eats the corn and Europe eats the hog. Corn thus
becomes incarnate, for what is a hog but 15 or 20 bushels
of corn on four legs? . . .

"Heretofore the quadruped has passed after death into
brine, obedient to the traditions of New England, where a
pork-barrel in every family is a sacred institution. But Eu-

139

rope did not relish and would not eat the hog in brine, so
that a great hog-reformation is now in vigorous process
through these interior States in packing the animal not in
brine, nor in a barrel, but in dry salt in a light, cheap wooden
bos. In that shape Europe has recently consented largely
to eat him."

It was the hogs, the cattle, the wheat, and the corn pour-
ing into Chicago after the fire that saved the city's honor in
the financial panic that clapped down upon the nation in 1873.

Many reasons have been given by economists for this dis-
astrous depression. The country had not yet recovered from
the wholesale destruction of property during the Civil War.
Business all over the land had been dealt two terrific blows
in 1871, when large sections of both Chicago and Boston had
burned. Moreover, the United States had been on a railroad-
building spree since 1869, building over 24,000 miles by 1872.
Money for these new roads had grown scarce when European
investors tightened their purse-strings in the foreign depres-
sion of 1873, and American capitalists, straining their credit
to float new bond-issues, plunged ahead into a panic of their
own. On September 8, 1873, Jay Cooke and Company, sup-
posedly most solid of all New York's bankers, closed its doors,
and the New York Stock Exchange went wild with cas-
cading prices. The public withdrew tons of greenbacks from
circulation and hoarded them. Industry was paralyzed. Wall
Street, quickly followed by Boston and Philadelphia, stopped
cashing large checks and merely certified them as "good
through clearing houses," which meant that the banks were
pooling their resources as an expedient to carry them through.

But out in Chicago, the bankers, although hard hit, went
on handing out cash for checks, declaring that the New York
use of clearing-house certificates was "in a way, suspension
of payment."

As William B. Ogden long ago had persuaded the city to
save its honor in panic-time, so in 1873 Lyman J. Gage, George
Schneider, and C. B. Blair stiffened the resolution of their
140

fellow bankers to keep on paying cash. Chicago weathered the
depression — which lasted until 1879 — better than did any
other large city.

This was not all a matter of heroism. It was considerably
a matter, as has been said, of hogs and grain. Where East-
ern cities were helpless, unable to sell their industrial bonds
and mortgages, Chicago's livestock and grain could always
command a market, even if a declining one. People still had
to eat. Europe bought heavily. Money still flowed in to the
"Phoenix City" as Henry Ward Beecher had nicknamed it
from the pulpit.

Even in the curtailment of receipts due to the panic, Deacon
Bross found cause for joyful blasts upon his battle-horn. To
him the bad news was good news, since it showed that Chicago's
loss was far less than that of St. Louis.

"There has been in 1875 a decline of 1,222,300 hogs raised
in Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois," he said, "yet Chi-
cago's receipts have dwindled only 189,089 for the year. And
this decline of less than 30 per cent, compares favorably with
the 60 per cent, which St. Louis has lost. Chicago has gained
over 75,000 cattle in the face of the depression during 1875,
while St. Louis has lost 24,000."

In that year the Queen of the Lakes handled almost three
times as many cattle as did the River Queen. But neither the
Deacon nor his fellow boosters wasted much breath on St.
Louis any more. In its quick rebuilding after the fire, Chicago
had at last passed the Mississippi River metropolis in popula-
tion. It was New York upon which Chicago now turned its
guns. Chicago might still be only fourth in size among Amer-
ican cities — New York, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn still out-
classing it, but it seemed to be giving Philadelphia and Brook-
lyn no thought. Brooklyn was obviously drifting into New
York's limits, and although it would be late in the '80s before
Chicago would pass Philadelphia as the second city, there was
an evident feeling in the lake metropolis that the Quaker City
was no bona-fide rival. New York was its business adversary.

141

Bross had sounded this antagonism as far back as the Spring
of 1871, when he was calling upon Canada to trade with his
city instead of with New York. Chicago, in '71, was campaign-
ing for a deeper waterway down the St. Lawrence to the sea —
a dream, like that of the ship canal to the Mississippi, which
was to haunt the city's "boosters" and "boomers" for two gen-
erations thereafter.

"What the West wants are the cheapest and the largest pos-
sible outlets to the ocean," said the Deacon. "She cares not a
rush for New York,"

With all the fervor of a clergyman lambasting the devil,
Bross denounced New York for harboring such scoundrels as
Commodore Vanderbilt, "who waters the stock of his railway
two or three times," Jim Fisk and Jay Gould the railway-stock
gamblers so typical, thought Bross, of the city whose ways
were dark and whose tricks were villainous.

"What if our trade builds up Toronto and makes another
New York of Montreal or Quebec, always we trust beating the
rascality of Wall Street? Canada and the Northwestern States
of America have a common and an absorbing interest in all
that can elevate and ennoble our common humanity."

To Europeans in 1875 he was sending propaganda urging
them to ship goods "direct to Chicago, where customs duties
can be paid and where they will be free from the exactions of
New York sharpers. The difference in rents and modes of
doing business here more than balance the cost of freight from
the seaboard and hence goods are sold as cheap or cheaper
here than they are in New York."

"No country merchant in the North, nor in the Southwest,"
he told America, "need now go to New York."

Later on, a mayor of Chicago was to be world-known for
his slogan, "Throw away your hammer and get a horru" He
was only carrying on Deacon Bross, whether he knew it or not.

There were horn-blowers for the city in other quarters as
well in 1875. Scribner's Monthly in September of that year
waxed eloquent over the place in. such words as "Chicago ! The
142

name has a strange fascination for the American people. The
name is familiar in the remotest villages of all parts of Eu-
rope. It is the best advertised city in the country. . . . The
wickedness and the piety of Chicago are in their way mar-
velous."

Those who owned hammers might have said in the "70s that
Chicago was still infamous, over the nation, as the "wicked
city," and that its population in the decade had not kept pace
with its incredible past. Where its people had increased 264
per cent, between 1850 and 1860, and 173 per cent, from 1860
to 1870, they had waxed only 68 per cent, between 1870 and
1880.

The horn-blowers could have replied that in the decade the
city's wholesale trade had gained steadily and that, consider-
ing the fire and the panic, Chicago was really more amazing
than ever. It had added clubs and societies to its social struc-
ture. In the previous decade it had founded its first two clubs,
the Chicago and the Standard, the first, a Gentile organiza-
tion, on March 25, 1869, the latter a Jewish club, ten days
later. By '73 the Fortnightly was founded, by '75 the Chi-
cago Literary Club, by '79 the Union League, a Republican
society, and by '80 the Iroquois, a Democratic political body.
It owned the largest chapter in the Grand Army of the Re-
public, the George H. Thomas Post. From the ashes of the
old Academy of Design it formed in 1879 the Art Institute,
and began the collection of works of art, its millionaires giving
generously.

In one regard Chicago was patronizing the older East. Like
a lusty youth who woos a senile parent away from certain an-
cient dietetic superstitions, Chicago approached the task of
educating the Atlantic seaboard to eat Western-dressed beef.
Easterners, accustomed to local butcher-shops, would have
none of the first carloads of Chicago beef that came in over
the Winter railroad tracks. Chicago's killers of hogs and cattle

143

had developed the refrigerator-car, too, before the decade was
done, and by main strength broken down the Eastern preju-
dice. Armour and Swift had both come to Chicago in the same
year, 1875.

P. D. Armour had come West in 1851, a boy of nineteen
headed for the goldfields of California. From a lake schooner,
this Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Yankee had landed at Mil-
waukee to take an overland wagon-train. As he went, the mem-
ory of the Wisconsin port stayed with him, telling him that
there he might well settle down some day. In 1862 he was
back, settling down as a partner of John Plankington, the
produce and commission man. One of his brothers, Joseph F.,
he placed in charge of the Chicago branch, and by 1867
Armour and Company had been founded and were packing
hogs in the Illinois city. When Joseph fell sick in 1875, P. D.
Armour moved down from Milwaukee to the wild town whose
business men were as famous at taking chances as were its un-
derworld gamblers.

Armour was a "packer" in the true sense of the term long
before the word was used to describe anybody who killed stock
and shipped meat. In Winter Armour and Company slaugh-
tered, pickled, cured, and smoked hog-meat, shipping their
preparations all over the world. Salt pork, smoked sausage,
smoked tongue, corned beef, hams, and bacon were their spe-
cialties*

Fresh beef was not at first Armour's concern. That trade
was dominated by a German Jew, more of a pioneer than most
of the "native Americans" who preserved the prejudices of
Know-Nothingism under the now suaver masks of culture and
trade.

"Little Nels" Morris, born in the Black Forest of Germany
in 1839, had reached America at twelve years of age and Chi-
cago at fifteen. He Had gone to work in the old Sherman stock-
yards, precursor of the great Union Stockyards, and having
no funds, nibbled around the edge of the trade buying hogs
and steers whose legs had been broken in crowded shipments.
144

These, good for quick butchering, he sold to meat-shops, and
soon he had funds for larger operations. More valuable than
funds, Nelson Morris had the best cattle-buyer's eye in the
history of the Chicago livestock trade, and by 1875 he was a
rich man with an organization that dwarfed all others in fur-
nishing fresh beef to the city.

Powerful concerns, then, headed the trade in 1875, Armour
and Company, Morris and Company, and Libby, McNeill and
Libby, who had been packing since 1868 — enough to have
frightened off any new competitors with less boldness than
that which led West a certain butcher's boy from West Sand-
wich, Massachusetts.

Gustavus F. Swift, born, like Morris, in 1839, had pro-
gressed from butcher's helper to slaughter-house operator in
New England and had, in his middle thirties, brought his fam-
ily to Chicago to be nearer the cattle supply. He had come
to buy steers in the Union Stockyards, where the Texas long-
horns arrived by the trainload, escorted by sombreroed plains-
men in chaps and thin, high heels, and where genuine cowboys
punched animals through chutes or roped runaways to the
tune of their own strange yipping and ki-yiing.

Swift, whom his son Louis F. called the "Yankee of the
Yards," saw a better way to make money than to ship live
steers. Instead of paying freight eastward on a whole steer,
why not merely pay on the edible portions ? So he began slaugh-
tering cattle and shipped the dressed meat to New England
in the Wintertime. Where a live steer had weighed 1,000
pounds, its trimmed carcass weighed but 600. Naturally Swift
got rich, although it took him years to convince the conserva-
tive Easterners that Western beef was all the better for hav-
ing hung and cooled for several days. In order to get his beef
into the New England homes, he sliced prices ruthlessly, tak-
ing losses with bold finality. Time and again he verged on fail-
ure, but with something of the same persuasive genius that
had made William B. Ogden, George M. Pullman, Cyrus H.
McCormick, and other Chicagoans giants in their fields, Swift

145

labored with Eastern butchers until he had won them and, with
them, the housewives.

Through 1878 and '79 he worked on the refrigerator-car,
which would permit Chicago to export fresh meat the year
around. Many inventors competed with designs, and as the
decade ended both Swift and Armour had their own fleets of
these revolutionary cars carrying supplies to all sections of
the country out of season as well as in.

Both men were busy, too, eliminating waste, finding uses for
those parts of the cows and hogs and sheep that had been
theretofore useless. They developed glue, fertilizer, soap, knife-
handles, a thousand and one by-products, to swell their in-
comes. They had begun the record for incredible efficiency
which was to culminate in the universally known jest, "The
Chicago packers use every part of a hog but his squeal." That
boast, in legend at least, is credited to Swift, and may well
have been true, since Chicagoans used to see him, dressed often
in his frock coat, prying around the outlet of his packing-house
sewers on Bubbly Creek, looking for traces of grease on the
water. If he caught a sign of fat going to waste, some superin-
tendent of his caught the very devil before sundown. Small
wonder, with such an energy at its head, that Swift and Com-
pany should in time rank as a business Titan.

The packers were something indeed for the horn-blowers
of Chicago to "boost'* as the '70s ended. They were launched
on a career that was to run through dark scandals, threats
of combination that would make public opinion shiver, govern-
ment regulation, and both political and literary "exposes."
But it was to be a career of stupendous achievement, and sight-
seers by the million would come to Chicago asking first of all
to be shown how the packers worked their miracles in the Union
Stockyards.

That circus-like fame of the "Yards" was to come in the
two decades that followed; at the close of the '70s Chicago was
more famous as the place where the bloody "Railroad Riots"
of the nation had reached their crest,
146

CHAPTER XIII

.TTCH of the strong, hard metal which immigration had
poured into Chicago's pot had melted with exceeding slowness.
Nor could it be said that the native American stock, still in-
sisting upon predominance, stirred the mixture with care. The
old Know-Nothing prejudices smouldered under the surface.
Reformers still hampered the Germans in the free enjoyment
of their Sunday beer, and in 1873 hounded Mayor Joseph
Medill into closing the saloons on the Sabbath.

The Germans spoke out loudly in protest. Many of them
had been residents of America for a generation and more, men
who had fought for the Union flag, and who resented it when
the reformers said, "The foreigners want to dictate to us and
force their lower standards upon our civilization."

The Puritan spirit organized the Law and Order League,
and every Sunday shut up the famous Exposition Hall, where
a permanent exhibit of machinery, fabrics, educational dis-
plays from all over the world, stood among amusement booths.
Wealth, the Protestant churches, and the Yankee aristocracy
backed the Sunday closing, a situation which prompted spokes-
men of the masses to declare, "We are not against the arrest
of Sunday-drunks, but we are against the dictation of men
who go to church on Sundays with long faces and then go

147

to the Board of Trade on Monday to swindle their colleagues
out of many bushels of grain."

A. C. Hesing, German newspaper editor, stout old battler
for "the people" and one of Ulysses S. Grant's political wheel-
horses, stirred the Germans, the Irish, and the native "liberals"
as he assailed the Law and Order League.

"They give you no cheap concerts and lectures to educate
you," he thundered. "They will not even let you go to the Ex-
position on the day when you can dress up and appear like
them, but they go whenever they please and make you and their
clerks do their work. They go there and look at the machinery
and furniture and fabrics you have made at wages of a dollar
and a half a day. I ask Dr. Kittridge and Dr. Fowler [two re-
former-clergymen], who preach morality and try to crowd
their words down your throats, to lay their hands on then-
hearts and answer if it is right for them to rob the poor of their
privileges.

"I ask them what harm there is, after you have been work-
ing hard in a dirty, dusty shop all week, for you to go to Lin-
coln Park on Sunday with your wives and babies to breathe a
little of the fresh air the Lord they pray to made? I ask them
what harm it would be for you to hear a little music there as
they hear it in their churches ? I ask them what harm there is
if, when you return, you take a glass of lager or wine to re-
fresh you? You are a pack of slaves if you suffer laws that
prohibit this."

Organizing the People's Party, the liberals swept the fall
elections of 1873, and in the mayor's seat put Harvey D- Col-
vin, certain to let the people have beer on their day of leisure.

But the Sunday-closing forces were not done. Defeated at
the polls, they turned to evangelism. Out of Ohio in the Spring
of 1874 came "the praying women" — crusaders of pious soul
who marched, overwrought, into saloons, knelt in the sawdust
praying for God to lead the bartender to repentance. They
pleaded with embarrassed patrons of the saloons, wept and
148

sang, not yet ready to fall upon the barrels and bottles with
the axes of Carrie Nation and her fanatic followers.

In Chicago the dean of women at Northwestern University
resigned her post that year to become head of the Illinois
Women's Christian Temperance Union, and to go about charm-
ing audiences with her religious eloquence. She was Frances E.
Willard, who in 1883 would form the W.C.T.U. and organ-
ize the women of America for the Prohibition that was destined
to arrive.

"The praying women" of '74 got nowhere in Chicago. The
temper of the town was against them, although they did drive
on City Hall one March morning, singing and praying, hun-
dreds strong, with a scattering of male clergymen on the
fringes of their phalanx. Both the Mayor and the Council re-
fused to obey their command that the saloons be closed on
Sunday, and they left amid the witticisms of street-mobs.

The temperance agitation was only part of the unrest that
was in the air. Another panic was on the city and nation. The
workingmen of the German, Irish, Scandinavian, Bohemian,
Slavonic, and French groups — half the town still foreign-born
or children of foreign-born — all stirred as their pay shrunk
or their jobs disappeared altogether. To the leadership of many
dissatisfied groups stepped educated Germans, "radicals," as
the "nativists" called them, intellectuals and philosophical real-
ists who understood well the Communist Manifesto which Karl
Marx had issued in 1848. That they should take issue sooner
or later with the Yankee rulers of Chicago's industrial and
social life was inevitable. They differed with Puritans on reli-
gion, for while both were Protestant by blood, the German
radical faction had long ago dismissed orthodoxy and the fun-
damentalists' idea of Jehovah. They laughed to see native
iconoclasts like Robert J. Ingersoll, down in Peoria, assailing
the Puritan clergymen. They were more interested in better-

149

ing the lot of man on this earth than in considering the prob-
lems of the hereafter.

Labor unions had taken timid root in Chicago m 1850 with
the organization of the printers' union, but the German phi-
losophers had not embraced the cause until 1869. The Civil
War, in which they were absorbed— battling for the freedom
of the negro slave — prevented an earlier enlistment. Then, as
they took up the idea of Socialism in America, the fire of 571
interrupted, and it was not until the hard times of '73 had
descended that they got whole-heartedly into the cause.

With the panic came unemployment to tens of thousands of
workmen who had poured in to help rebuild the Phoenix City.
Six months before the fire, carpenters, bricklayers, stone-
masons, drew from $7.50 to $10.00 a day. Three years later
they were lucky if they got work at the prevailing prices of
a fourth of that. Educated, well-bred "tramps" were as com-
mon as ordinary hobos. Of the 25,000 arrests made by the po-
lice in 1874, the bulk were jobless tradesmen and laborers.
Squads of police stood at Chicago depots turning the vagrants
and job-hunters away from the city. The lumber-shovers, down
to 75 cents and a dollar a day, and living in one-room hovels
of thin clapboards, struck when their wages were threatened
with further reduction. Hordes of starving "scabs" rushed for
their jobs, and the laborers abandoned the strike suddenly.
Walk-outs in other lines failed as quickly. The unemployed
paraded under signs "Bread or Blood." Jobless sons of Yan-
kee pioneers forgot their ancient distrust of "f oreigners" and
began to mingle with the idle Germans, Scandinavians, Irish,
as they all listened to the doctrine of Karl Marx. Dissent and
protest became national, many socialistic groups fusing in
July ?76, into the Workingmen's Party of the United States.
The Chicago section was strong enough to put forward an
aldermanic candidate — luckless but brilliant — in the Spring
of 1877.

He was Albert R. Parsons, who had come to Chicago shortly
before with his Spanish-Indian wife. Born in Alabama^ he had
150

entered the Confederate army at thirteen, had served through-
out the war, and in '65 had gone to Texas to run a newspaper.
In his Waco weekly he had begun to fight for the negro's
rights, calling upon the South to make the f reedman a citizen
and a voter. Naturally the South moved Parsons along out of
town, and in '73 he reached Chicago with his wife, joining the
Typographical Union and going to work as a typesetter for
the Times. While his hands composed columns that denounced
the workingmen as robbers because they demanded higher
wages, his mind boiled with anger, and, before long, he was
active in the party of protest. So eloquent was he that he
speedily overcame the distrust with which the foreign-born
members regarded the English-speaking members of the Work-
ingmen's Party. The Germans whispered among themselves
that the "damned Yankees needed watching," but Parsons in
'77 won them, and although defeated for alderman as their
candidate, was famous as a "moral victor.5'

When the railroad riots of that year were raging, Parsons
was addressing thousands of idolizing strikers.

On July 17th, Chicago newspapers began describing the
battles between striking locomotive-firemen and the police in
Baltimore. The trouble spread to Pittsburgh, where the mi-
litia fired into the strikers and were chased into roundhouses
while $10,000,000 worth of railroad property was destroyed.
The trouble spread to Philadelphia, Wheeling, Cincinnati, and
St. Louis.

Chicago shivered.

Almost hourly the city read of the epidemic's approach. A
little evening newspaper, only eighteen months old, the Daily
News was tossing "extras" into the excited streets. Its circula-
tion of some 20,000 a day doubled in a day's time, then trebled
and more, as its hard-driving editor, Melville E. Stone, later
general manager of the Associated Press, sent squads of re-
porters through the city to note the workingmen. Back in the

151

business office of the Daily News sat the owner, always calm,
always cool, Victor F. Lawson. Stone and he had established
their penny-newspaper by Herculean importations of copper
cents into a town which had recognized nothing smaller than a
nickel. Persuading merchants to advertise 99-cent bargains,
they arranged it so that buyers had a penny left over— and
nothing but the Dally News to buy with it. Now thousands of
idle men bought the Daily News because it was within their
means. Other thousands bought it because it "covered" the na-
tional strike with fresh editions in rapid succession.

Chicago's "big55 men, an imposing array of merchants,
bankers, and business men, headed by Levi Z. Leiter, walked
in upon the Daily News on Monday, July 23d, demanding that
it suspend for the time being. They felt that it should be ob-
vious to anybody that the strike was a premeditated plot of
anarchists to cripple industry and society all over the nation.
These extras, they said, were inflaming the masses. The paper
must stop.

Stone and Lawson refused. Their paper was "made."

Mass-meetings, peaceable enough, were held that night. The
Michigan Central switchmen struck against threats that their
pay, already cut from $65 to $55 a month, was to get another
slash. On Tuesday morning all the railroads, the pride of
Chicago, were paralyzed, the police rushing and running —
the patrol-wagon had not yet been invented — halting now and
then to pour blood out of their shoes.

Mayor Monroe Heath, prodded by business men, sent for
Albert R. Parsons and told him to quit addressing the strikers,
to go back to Texas, for "those Board of Trade men would
as leave hang you to a lamppost as not." Parsons refused to
quit Chicago, indeed seemed amazed that the Mayor should
not understand that this was only a pacific strike for a living
wage* not an armed revolution. He was thrown out by His
Honor, branded in the newspapers as "leader of the Com-
mune," and walked, unrecognized, about town pondering upon
the violence of the capitalists. That night neither he nor any
152

one else had a chance to address the three thousand workers
who assembled, for the police scattered the waiting crowd
with clubs and blank cartridges.

Hurriedly Parsons and his comrades in the Workingmen's
Party tried to direct the strike, which, they always insisted,
was not of their fomentation. By circulars they sought to hold
down violence and to solidify sentiment behind demands for
an eight-hour working day and a 20 per cent, raise in wages.
But they could not ride the storm.

On Wednesday blood splashed on the "Black Road" which
ran along Blue Island Avenue up to the great McCormick
Reaper-works. Policemen had fought with strikers who, a thou-
sand strong, stood howling at the "scabs." The lumbermen,
the tailors of the North Side, the workers generally, were out.
Twenty thousand men, police and citizens, were under arms.
Squads of householders shouldered rifles and patrolled the resi-
dence districts, fifty different mobs were chasing militiamen and
volunteer "specials." Saloons were closed. J. V. Farwell and
Field and Leiter gave their dray-horses to transport the police.
Citizens brought rifles and horses to City Hall. On Randolph
Street Bridge the police fought with a mob. At the Chicago,
Burlington & Quincy roundhouse on West 16th, locomotives
were destroyed and volleys fired. A pitched battle was fought
at the viaduct between Halsted and Archer Avenues. Terror
had the business men by the throat, and at a meeting on Thurs-
day in the famous Moody and Sankey Tabernacle on Monroe
between Franklin and Market, they demanded 5,000 addi-
tional militiamen to put down "the ragged commune wretches."

Carter Harrison, home from Washington where he was serv-
ing a second term as Congressman, defeated the plan for a
military "rescue."

"Trust the police," he said. "The people of Chicago are in-
dustrious, the laborers are workingmen of the truest stamp,
and today there is the remarkable phenomenon exhibited of
a city of 500,000 men, women and children — a city composed
of industrious workingmen — controlled by a mob of two or

153

three hundred idlers and ragamuffins. It is not laboring people
who are making the strike. A few laboring men commenced it,
but it is the idlers, thieves, and ruffians who are carrying it on.
We have stopped the railroads, and what can Chicago do with-
out the railroads?"

The Workingmen's Party kept urging its members to be
peaceable, though firm. "The grand principles of Humanity
and Popular Sovereignty need no violence to sustain them."

Scores among the "upper classes" left town, and fright
swept everywhere until two companies of United States regu-
lars, still dusty from Indian campaigns in the Northwest, ar-
rived on Thursday afternoon and marched through the streets
with Lieut.-Col. Frederick Dent Grant, son of the illustrious
Ulysses, at their head. The strike was broken. That day the
Daily News attempted to explain the trouble:

"For years the railroads of this country have been wholly
run outside of the United States Constitution. . „ . They have
charged what they pleased for fare and freights. They cor-
rupted the State and city legislatures. They corrupted Con-
gress, employing for that purpose a lobby that dispensed bribes
to the amount of millions and millions. . . . Their managers
have been plundering the roads and speculating upon their
securities to their own enrichment. Finally, having found noth-
ing more to get out of the stockholders or bondholders, they
have commenced raiding not only upon the general public but
their own employees.

"The people have no sympathy with the rioters, but they
have as little for the Vanderbilts, the Jay Goulds, and the Jim
Fisks who have been running the property until they have
ruined one of the most expensive and finest the world had ever
known. Every child in the United States over the age of ten
knows this.

"The frightful evils we now endure were brought upon us
by a course of legislation in the interest of capital and against
industry," said the News a day or two later. "It is simply non-
sense to say that there are not two sides to the question."
154

Such sentiments appealed to the average citizen of Chi-
cago when, fear gone, he had time to think* All of the three
hundred rioters who had been arrested were let go in the gen-
eral feeling of relief. No policemen had been killed. Of the
twenty to thirty-five persons dead, some were strikers, many
were hoodlums. On Friday the strikers were back at work, the
Board of Trade open again, the city, as from that moment,
regaining prosperity. Good times were returning. The terror
could never happen again, people said.

But within nine years something worse had terrorized Chi-
cago— dynamite! The first bomb had been thrown.

After the strike of '77 socialism gained dizzily, then waned
as its leaders despaired of relief through political measures.
Anarchism, more radical in its methods of winning better edu-
cation, freer opportunity, and higher wages for workers, sup-
planted it, and in Chicago anarchism was stronger than in any
other city. True enough, it had no more than 3,000 members,
a ridiculous number among the 850,000 Chicagoans, but it
had the gifted Parsons and such able publicists as August
Spies and Michael Schwab of the German paper Arbeit er
Zeitung, Samuel Fielden, once an English weaver, later a Meth-
odist lay preacher and teamster, Oscar Neebe, organizer of
the beer-wagon drivers, Adolph Fischer, a typesetter, George
Engel, a toy-maker, and Louis Lingg, a fantastic organizer
for the Brotherhood of Carpenters.

For- all their zeal their meetings on the lake-front were at-
tended by crowds of less than fifty, and their newspapers were
wretchedly edited, "obscure little sheets with scarcely any cir-
culation."

They talked vaguely of revolution, spoke of dynamite as a
symbol of the people's rights, mooned dreamily over the words
"Humanity," "Human Rights," "Human Progress." Now and
then one of their number would discuss dynamite with a re-

155

porter from the Tribune or Times or Daily News and gain
publicity for the "cause" in the resulting sensation which was
made of the "menace." In private, it is creditably said, they
laughed at the public excitement over bombs, knowing how
few if any of them had ever seen one of the dread missiles.

Just as the "anarchist" scare was about to perish, much as
the "bolshevist" phantom was due to fade in America some
forty years later, another of those national panics began, last-
ing from '84 to >86 and throwing armies of workmen out ^of
their jobs. The Federation of Trades Unions countered with
demands for the eight-hour day.

As in 1877, trouble began on the Black Road. The McCor-
mick plant, having cut workers' pay again, saw strikers jeer
at "scabs" along this somber cinder-path. This time the man-
agers would not rely wholly upon the police. From the head-
quarters of the Pinkerton Detective Agency they hired opera-
tives to guard the plant and its non-union laborers.

Allan Pinkerton, who had died the year before, had come
a long, ironic way after his arrival in Chicago in 1842. As a
youth in Scotland, he had been for the workingman and human
rights, even joining the Chartists, those headlong political re-
formers who in 1838 advocated the use of arms in winning
universal suffrage, equal representation, better political con-
ditions for the masses — a program known as the People's
Charter. The British Isles knew them as "physical force men"
and prosecuted them relentlessly, with the result that many,
including young Pinkerton, fled to America to escape im-
prisonment.

In Chicago the boy became deputy sheriff of Cook County,
then in 1850 the first detective of the little city. That same
year he established Pinkerton's Detective Agency, largely for
work on the "underground railroad." The passion for liberty
still dominated him, and into "Abolitionist" Chicago he and

156

his men brought hundreds of runaway slaves, speeding them to
the safety of Canada. "John Brown/* he once told his son, "is
a greater man than Napoleon and just as great as George
Washington."

By 1860 he had added a corps of night-watchmen to guard
business houses, an enterprise so successful that before the
outbreak of the Civil War he had offices of both his detective
agency and his "preventative watch" in several other cities.
Soon he was guarding the United States mail for the Chicago
district and in 1860 was in charge of the person of Abraham
Lincoln as the Springfield lawyer went East for his Presidential
inauguration. By Lincoln he was assigned in 1861 to organize
the United States Secret Service and throughout the war
served in the tempestuous duties of such a post.

Now, in 1885, the whirligig of existence had shifted the
name of Pinkerton from "left" to "right." No longer would
it be associated with movements that set human rights above
property rights, and as the massed detectives marched out
to serve the established order of things in Chicago's labor
strife, they were commanded by William Pinkerton, that boy
who had been told by his father to think upon the greatness
of John Brown of Osawatomie.

The "Pinkertons" whom the employers brought to the Black
Road were hated by the strikers more viciously than were the
"scabs" themselves, and soon the detectives were exchanging
blows and shots with the workingmen. As the skirmishes became
known, the idea of a general strike grew among Chicago's
laborers, and swept on even after the McCormick plant had
settled the strike, giving employees a 15 per cent, salary in-
crease. On the night of April 28, a mob gathered at the foot
of La Salle Street to howl at the city's leading financiers, who
had gathered in the new Board of Trade building for its in-
augural banquet.

Parsons and other radical leaders, arrayed now in the In-
ternational Working People's Party, addressed a street-throng
that bore red and black flags — red for the common blood of hu-

157

inanity, black for starvation. Parsons said they would march
on the "Board of Thieves" singing the Marseillaise. Fielden
denounced the Board of Trade men for toasting their $2,000,-
000 Temple of Usury while 2,500,000 men were jobless in the

nation.

"How long will you sit down to 15-cent meals when those
fellows inside are sitting down to a banquet at $20 a plate?"

he shouted. , .

Parsons derided Bishop Cheney, the prelate, for baptizing
the cornerstone of this Temple of Mammon, adding, "What a
truthful follower that man must be of the tramp Nazarene,
Jesus, who scourged the thieves from the Board of Trade of

Jerusalem!"

Armed police were massed before the new building when the
singing paraders arrived, and they shooed the mob away— an
incident, on the whole, merely frothy and harmless, yet loom-
ing large a little later when Parsons, Fielden, Spies, and others
were on trial for their lives.

Over the city rules the man who had taken Chicago for his
"bride," Carter H. Harrison, entering now, in '85, on his
fourth consecutive term as mayor. He has grown rich in real
estate, loves silk underwear, and owns the town's aristocrats
as Hs personal friends ; yet he champions the proletariat, loves
the common people, and is adored by them. He is for progress,
for union labor and a wide-open town. Even his enemies, the
conservative newspapers and the Protestant clergy, admit that
he is honest and that the city's integrity owes much to him.
Reformers who share United States Senator John A. Logan's
opinion that Harrison has made Chicago known as a Gomor-
rah concede that "our Carter" has been good for business.
Every day on the streets, people cheer the 225-pound mayor
as he thunders by on his galloping horse, his slouch hat and
big beard rakish in the Chicago winds. The masses love his
hot, witty head, his habit of listening to their woes, his private
and eternal ambition to catch a burglar some night in his man-
sion— and kill him. Harrison lets the saloons stay open and
158

believes that gambling and prostitution are ancient, unkill-
able sins. He is Chicago. "The young city is not only vigor-
ous but she laves her beautiful limbs daily in Lake Michigan
and comes out clean and pure every morning," he trumpets.
Never will he allow troops to be brought in to shoot down strik-
ing workingmen. Freedom is his creed. His "bride" can talk
all she wants.

Through that Summer of 1885 minor strikes kept uttering
warnings of serious trouble ahead. Street-car employees walked
out, declaring that the company had violated their rights* The
public supported them — Mayor Harrison declaring that nine
out of every ten citizens were with the strikers. The men even-
tually forced the street-car company to surrender, but not
before "idlers and roughs" had rioted for several days. Juries
promptly freed prisoners brought in by the police and on
the surface the thing seemed to blow over. But more people
than ever were getting it into their heads that behind these
simple workingmen was lurking something vast, demoniac, and
murderous.

By the following February the McCormick works had de-
clared for the "open shop," and "scabs" were being beaten on
the Black Road once more, the Pinkertons and police hurrying.

Parsons and his comrades now abandoned their initial dis-
trust of the eight-hour-day crusade and threw themselves be-
hind it. Five hundred tailor-girls, Bohemian, Polish, Hun-
garian, paraded under red flags. Six men died under volleys
of police-fire outside the McCormick works. August Spies,
whom the bullets had interrupted as he addressed some
5,000 Slavs on the Black Road, dashed to the Arbeiter Zevtung
office and tossed off a proclamation, "Revenge," sending it in
German and English over town by a horseback rider. It read :

"Your masters sent out their bloodhounds — the police. They
killed six of your brothers at McCormick's this afternoon.
They killed the poor wretches because they, like you, had the

159

courage to disobey the supreme will of your bosses. ... If
you are men, destroy the hideous monster that seeks to destroy
you. To arms ! We call you to arms !"

Next day Schwab raged in the Arbeiter Ztitung, "In pal-
aces they fill goblets with costly wine and pledge the health of
the bloody banditti of Order. Dry your tears, ye poor and suf-
fering. Take heart, ye braves. Rise in your might and level the
existing robber rule in the dust."

A great mass-meeting was called for 7.30 the next evening,
May 4th, in the Haymarket, Randolph Street, between Des-
plaines and Halsted.

Mayor Harrison and the police kept hands off, but watched
carefully from the Desplaines Street station, the resolute
mayor himself going out to mingle with the crowds that lis-
tened to Spies and Parsons. Standing in the throng, he kept
striking match after match to relight his cigar. A friend asked
him to stop it, lest he draw violence to himself. "I want the
people to know their mayor is here," he replied. After a time
Harrison went back to the station, saying that the affair was
"tame," that nothing was likely to occur, and that the reserves
might as well be sent home. Such orders were given. The Mayor
and the Chief of Police went off to their respective beds, leav-
ing Inspector Bonfield, excitable, brave, questioned before for
his rashness, in charge of the men still on duty.

Rain had begun to fall. At the Haymarket, Fielden, the
Englishman, spoke last. Scouts, running from the meeting,
told Bonfield that the orator was saying that "the law must be
throttled, killed, and stabbed." The Inspector's temperament
betrayed him. Ordering out a hundred and seventy-six of his
men, he marched on the crowd. Captain Ward* in the front
rank, called upon the meeting to break up. Fielden replied that
it was peaceable.

A second later, before anything else could be said pro or con,

an explosion ripped through the ranks of the police, flattening

scores, lighting up the rainy blackness, shaking the West Side

windows in their casements. Bonfield, blundering, perhaps ex-

160

cusably under the circumstances, ordered his men to fire, which
they did in all directions, wounding each other as well as the
bystanders. People trampled each other, shouting and scream-
ing, as they tried to escape the fusillade from the maddened
police. Wounded men dragged themselves into doorways. Clubs
broke skulls. Scattering shots from fugitives, the police said,
kept popping at them for several minutes.

Patrol-wagons came for the wounded officers, who numbered
sixty-seven. Of these seven died. How many of the populace
were killed was never determined, although the police insisted
that the number was large and merely hidden by the anarchists,
who spirited their dead and wounded away.

For a day or two Chicago seemed to be still stunned by the
detonation. The shock of a bomb — so strange and foreign a
weapon — in an American city sickened the citizens. Then hor-
ror turned to fury — the nation joining in. Hysteria rocked
Chicago. The police raided wildly, "discovering" bombs most
conveniently in places where they would do most harm to the
accused Parsons, Schwab, Spies, et al. A Captain Schaack of
the police force disgusted even Chief Ebersold, his superior, by
the ferocity of his attacks upon workingmen's homes, "dyna-
miter's lairs" he called them. Very natural passions of revenge
dominated many of the police. Love of the limelight spurred
others on. The terrorized city whipped the officers to greater
efforts, the police in turn kept public fear at razor edge.

Arrests were wholesale, a grand jury winnowing out indict-
ments for Fielden, Parsons, Spies, Schwab, and such others of
the Workingmen's Party as Fischer, Engel, Lingg, Neebe,
William Seliger, and Rudolph Schnaubelt. Parsons and
Schnaubelt escaped, the former to a Wisconsin farm, the latter
to Europe, from which he never returned. The case against
Seliger was dropped.

On June 21st the accused were rushed to trial, and as pro-

161

ceedings were begun in walked Parsons to shake hands calmly
with his comrades, and sit down beside them for trial. He would
face the music for the "cause."

Distinguished lawyers, reviewing the trial in later years,
were divided in opinion, some saying that the verdict lacked
justice, others saying that the accused were obviously guilty.
Errors were manifold in its conduct. Citizens' associations,
business men, public sentiment, demanded that the noose come
quickly and with small ado. Judge Joseph E. Gary assembled
a jury that was all but hand-picked, his bailiff reputedly boast-
ing how he had "packed" the venire so that counsel for the
defense might speedily exhaust their preemptory challenges
and be forced to accept prejudiced jurors. No creditable evi-
dence linked the accused with the throwing of the bomb. In-
deed, no bomb-thrower was ever discovered. The charge was
that the dynamiter, whoever he was, must of necessity have
been prompted to his crime by the inflammatory speeches and
publications of the prisoners. On the exhibit-table the prose-
cution spread a jumble of apparatus which, it claimed, was
for the making of bombs. The police insisted that they had
found them in anarchists' quarters, notably Lingg's home.

On August 19 the jury voted "guilty," as it was expected
to do; Judge Gary pronounced "death" for Parsons, Spies,
Lingg, Fielden, Schwab, Fischer, and Engel. Neebe, whose
crimes consisted of owning stock in the Arbeit er Zeitung, was
given fifteen years in prison. Counsel for the defense argued
for a new trial and was refused. The condemned asked to be
allowed to address the court. This was granted. One by one
they arose and spoke, ostensibly to the judge and the jury —
in reality they were speaking to the world. Newspapers gave
columns to these addresses, as they had to the entire trial, which
was one of the great "stories" of the latter half of the century.
The speeches were reprinted, made into pamphlets, passed
around the earth, cherished by many as curiosities, by some as
monstrosities, by others as things of literary charm, by still
others as gospels of the workingman's cause.
162

Fielden fascinated even his prosecutors by his three-hour
oration. Oration it was in the finest sense, thought trained
speakers who listened. The man was eloquent, philosophical.

Among other things he said, "Your Honor, with due respect
for your years, I wish to say this, that it is quite possible that
you cannot understand how men can hold such ridiculous ideas.
Yet it is well known that persons who live to a ripe old age
very seldom change their opinions. It is a natural result."

At one point he casually mentioned that "since I was eight
years of age I have gained my bread by the hard labor of my
hand." His prosecutors, at this, whispered among themselves,
saying that if he had spoken to the jury before their verdict, he
would most certainly have gone free.

But Fielden asked for no mercy in his swan-song. The
ecstasy of martyrdom and the poetry of sacrifice were already
transporting him, as he said :

"Today the beautiful Autumn sun kisses with balmy breeze
the cheek of every free man ; I stand here never to bathe my
head in its rays again. I have loved my fellow man as I have
loved myself. I have hated trickery, dishonesty, and injustice.
If it will do any good, I freely give myself up. I trust the time
will come when there will be a better understanding, more in-
telligence, and above the mountains of iniquity, wrong, and
corruption, I hope* the sun of righteousness and truth and jus-
tice will come to bathe in its balmy light the emancipated
world."

Spies, too, was lyrical :

"If you think that by hanging us you can stamp out the
labor movement, then call your hangman. But you will tread
upon the sparks. Here and there, behind you, in front of you,
and everywhere flames will spring up. You cannot understand
it. You do not believe in witchcraft, but you do believe in 'con-
spiracies.' "

Schwab tried to tell his listeners what anarchy really meant.

"Anarchy," he said, "is a state of society in which the only
government is reason; a state of society in which all human

163

beings do right for the simple reason that it is right and hate
wrong because it is wrong."

Louis Lingg, haughty and defiant, snarled, "Anarchy is
called disorder. Anarchy is opposition against the order of
things which does not allow a man to live a life that is worth
living. I die gladly upon the gallows in the sure hope that hun-
dreds and thousands of people to whom I have spoken will now
recognize and make use of dynamite. In this hope I despise
you and despise your laws. Hang me for it.

Parsons, denouncing the trial, said, "The verdict is the sum
totality of the organized passion of Chicago."

The jury, he charged, had received $100,000 after the trial
as a gift from Chicago millionaires. The city had wined and
dined the twelve men who had voted "guilty," he declared.

"I am called a dynamiter," he went on. "Why? Did I ever
use dynamite? No. Did I ever have any? No. Why, then, am
I called a dynamiter? Listen and I will tell you."'

Dynamite, he said, was a symbol of power which made one
poor man the equal of a king's army. Gunpowder had freed
the common man from the tyranny of the robber-barons in
feudal times.

"It is democratic; it makes everybody equal. The Pinker-
tons, the police, the militia, are absolutely worthless in the pres-
ence of dynamite. They can do nothing with the people at all.
Dynamite is the equilibrium. It is the annihilate. It is the dis-
seminator of authority; it is the dawn of peace; it is the end
of war. It is man's best and last friend; it emancipates the
world from the domineering of the few over the many, because
all government, in the last resort, is violence; all law, in the
last resort, is force. Force is the law of the universe; force is
the law of nature, and this newly discovered force makes all
men equal and therefore free."

He and his fellows, as he talked, appeared as toilers for hu-
manity, fighters for the day when capitalists would not put
children to work and "cripple their soft bones."

"We plead for the little ones, we plead for the helpless, we

164

plead for the oppressed, we seek redress for those who are
wronged, we seek knowledge and intelligence for the ignorant,
we seek liberty for the slave — we seek the welfare of every
human being."

The judge set the hanging for Friday, December 3rd. At
this Parsons spoke up, "December 3rd — a Friday — hangman's
day! The day our Lord Jesus Christ died to save the world.
He may have died again and the world be saved again."

There were times, during these speeches, when it must have
seemed to the old, listening prairie, that it was Tecumseh, the
red man, talking to William Henry Harrison — not a German
or a Texan or a Britisher addressing a judge and a jury.

Able defense had been made by counsel, and in the appeal
to the Supreme Court of Illinois, it was Leonard Swett, still
wrapped in the mantle of his friend, Abraham Lincoln, who
spoke for the condemned. It was useless. The verdict stood and
was sustained by the United States Supreme Court. Governor
Richard Oglesby, however, comnluted the sentences of Schwab
and Fielden to life imprisonment. Louis Lingg killed himself
in his cell by exploding a dynamite cartridge between his teeth.

Spies, Parsons, Fischer, and Engel were hanged on Novem-
ber 11, 1887, in the county jail, Spies saying, through his gal-
lows-hood, "There will be a time when our silence will be more
powerful than the voices you strangle today," Parsons crying,
"Let the voice of the people be heard !"

The leaders of Chicago said "Good riddance" the day of the
hanging. Many honest citizens said, "It's too bad about them,
but society must be protected." Many friends of the dead men
said, "They died like John Brown of Osawatomie."

Once the execution was performed reaction, deep and trou-
blesome, set in. Much of Chicago's population felt shame and
remorse. The merchants, the manufacturers, the bankers, the
wholesalers, the railway magnates, the owners of schooners and

165,

real estate— those restless, often reckless Yankees who had done
so much to lift Chicago up out of the mud, out of the fire-ruins,
out of the panics, stuck to their guns. They were convinced
that they had helped lift the Garden City out of the toils of
bloody anarchy. And when Governor John P. Altgeld in 1893
pardoned Fielden, Neebe, and Schwab on the grounds that
their trial had been unfair and illegal, they branded him an
enemy of society.

But across the city public sentiment decreed that, after this,
it would be better to let free speech have its way without raids
by the police, and when a girl named Jane Addams came to
town in 1889— so soon after the hideous scare— she saw the
amazing spectacle of radicals, anarchists, socialists, labor-
leaders, dissenters of all kinds, speaking from the same plat-
form in the new Auditorium of a Sunday with clergymen, mer-
chants, realtors, Republican politicians of every shade and
gradation of thought, while so ultra-respectable a banker as
Lyman J. Gage himself benignly presided over the scene, his
white beard bespeaking peace.

In such an atmosphere of liberality Miss Addams' genius
flowered. With her friend Ellen Gates Starr, she leased the
house once occupied by a pioneer, Charles J. Hull, and estab-
lished the social settlement, Hull House, at Halsted and Polk
Streets, where the melting-pot had its vortex*

A monument to the hanged anarchists was erected at Wald-
heim Cemetery, and there were years, in the decades that fol-
lowed, when almost as many visitors came to it in the course of
twelve months as to the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the park
which bears his name. Anarchy as a "cause" disappeared from
the American scene, leaving the dead men in the eyes of many
laboring men as "martyrs" to the struggle which toilers under
many labels waged for higher wages, the eight-hour day, and
the rights of the working classes.

The tragedy passed into history. A bomb, possibly the firsb
thrown in America, had fixed itself upon Chicago's reputation,
and many Chicago citizens came to feel, perhaps more strongly

166

than could citizens of other American cities, that as a general
thing patience and tolerance must be preserved in dealing with
violent workingmen.

It is a day soon after the catastrophe of Haymarket Square.

A delegation of capitalists call upon Mayor Harrison, who
has said that he doesn't believe the "anarchists" had anything
to do with the bomb. They tell him that, henceforth, he must
suppress free speech. Up speaks "the merchant prince," Mar-
shall Field, himself: "Mr. Harrison, we represent great in-
terests in Chicago — "

"Mr. Field," the mayor interrupts, "any poor man owning
a single small cottage as his sole possession has the same inter-
est in Chicago as its richest citizen."

167

CHAPTER XIV

the anarchists, who so blackened the name of the city
among conventional folk the world around, had reminded ob-
servers, now and then, of Tecumseh the Indian, it was another
Chicago labor leader, part Indian in fact, who came far nearer
to the traditions of the Shawnee communist.

Honore Joseph Jaxon, though less famous than Parsons,
Spies, Fielden, et al., was more influential than they in the
actual history of the town,

Jaxon had been born a nomad in his trader-father's buffalo-
camp May 2, 1861, somewhere on the Northwestern plains.
Indian blood was in him, and although his white blood made
him graduate from the University of Toronto, the red strain
captured him later when he claimed as his idol Louis Kiel,
leader of an Indian rebellion. In a revival of that outbreak in
January, 1885, Jaxon was captured and pegged to the ground
until such time as he could be transported to prison. Escaping
to the United States, he wandered about giving lectures on the
Kiel affair, and in 1886 arrived in Chicago. That Spring, six
thousand carpenters of the city went out on strike and, moving
among them, Jaxon began writing pronunciamentos urging
peaceful, watchful waiting. "Patience will win," he told them.
168

"Tire the contractors out, and you will win your eight-hour
day."

But the contractors, hiring non-union labor, went ahead with
their buildings, and at length Jaxon, according to the story,
told the labor chiefs to summon into headquarters all the de-
pendable, fearless men they could trust. These volunteers he
coached carefully, saying, "Go to the strike-breakers and ask
them to quit for the brotherhood of man."

Such appeals failed.

"Now," said Jaxon, "try this persuasion,'5 and he produced
stacks of clubs, wagon-spokes, cudgels.

Like a military general he organized violence. At an ap-
pointed hour all squads were to strike simultaneously. To
North Side "jobs" he sent West or South Side strikers and
vice versa, eliminating so far as he could the chance of combats
between friends.

Soon after the appointed moment, riot-calls came from all
sections of the city, engulfing the police, who could only dash
here and there, scattering their forces. Non-union work stopped
before the wagon-spoke onslaught, and although the con-
tractors attempted to revive it, they gave up in six weeks5 time.
The eight-hour day had made a great stride forward.

For himself, Jaxon seems to have asked nothing, not even
power in the unions. He, who had given workingmen a prac-
tical campaign of action that was far more eff ective, if lawless,
than any proposed by the fantastic anarchists, resumed his
work of pacifism. In the Autumn of 1886, with Lyman J. Gage,
he addressed the city's leading business men in the president's
room of the First National Bank, outlining a plan for the Civic
Federation, a non-partisan, altruistic body which might, as he
saw it, bring justice and sense into city affairs.

"We must eliminate the unscrupulous rich and the purchas-
able poor," he said.

Vainly he tried to organize the bond-salesmen of La Salle
Street, the fish-venders of Maxwell Street, the life-insurance

169

men and rug-peddlers all into one common body, the Solicitors'
and Canvassers5 Union.

Concentration of wealth in downtown Chicago would be the
ruin of the people rich and poor, he thought. Brooding over
this in his home above a pickle-factory on Lake Street west of
Halsted, he began tinkering with alchemy, hoping to make
gold cheaply and thus secure funds with which to build a tre-
mendous canal around Chicago, so that ships could discharge
their cargoes at dozens of points, each of which would become

a city.

"I'll make the grass grow in the Loop some day," he kept
saying, through the 1890s and early 1900s.

In his Prince Albert coat and with a vocabulary that was
scholarly, Jaxon used to call upon labor editors of Chicago
newspapers with propaganda aimed at bettering the city and
its people in many differing ways.

At such times he would lapse curiously into language that
was a gentle mixture of Indian simplicity and Quaker plain-
ness, saying to editors, "The Great Spirit tells me thee will
print this."

Eventually he disappeared and the city forgot him, but the
organized "slugging" which he, who wanted to be a pacifist,
had reluctantly introduced to gain the eight-hour day, re-
mained, ironically, as his contribution to Chicago.

For all their violence the '80s were to live in Chicago's mem-
ory as a period of thrift and prosperity. Completing its first
half -century of incorporated life, the city could look back upon
its own rise with incredulity. Where covered wagons had rolled
through the mud, hundreds of trains could now be seen com-
ing and going in a day. Where its entire trade for a year had
but lately been far short of a million dollars, the city could
now behold a single packer transacting that amount of busi-
ness in a week. Chicago could remember the time when half the
170

women in the log town could fill their larders out of one Hoo-
sier's wagon ; now one bank alone, among scores, handled over
ten million dollars, in and out, during a day.

In place of the dreary swamps surrounding cabins, there
were almost two thousand acres in public parks about the city,
all of them connected with extravagant boulevards. The sys-
tem might be still far beyond what the inhabitants could use,
but men were no longer saying, as they had, "Our parks fit
Chicago about as well as a wedding-ring fits a baby's finger."

The blowers of the city's horn had the hammer-wielders
down throughout most of the '80s. Newspapers still railed at
"the low doggeries" which blotted the sidestreets of the down-
town section, but in the same breath they boasted of the 100
per cent, increase in population that Chicago had achieved in
the decade.

In 1890 the school census showed Chicago to have 1,208,676
souls, 200,000 having been added in that year by annexing
populous suburbs.

The towns of Jefferson, Lake View, Lake, Hyde Park and a
portion of Cicero had been taken into the fold in '89, and in
'90 South Englewood, Washington Heights, and West Rose-
land, residential sections to the southwest, were added. In
twenty years Chicago had stretched its area one hundred and
forty-four square miles.

When the United States census of 1890 showed that Chi-
cago was the second city of the land, it exulted, for it was now
only 400,000 behind New York. Nor did it feel downcast when
New York, in the next few years, forged far ahead, for wasn't
Manhattan's growth, asked Chicago, mainly due to its annexa-
tion of Brooklyn?

Immigration, which had brought over 5,000,000 people
into the nation across many borders during the decade, had
hopelessly swamped the "old, American" stock in Chicago, as
the school census of 1890 showed. Fully 68 per cent, of its
inhabitants were foreign-born, while of the 32 per cent, native-
born, many were the children of "old residenters" among the

171

German and Irish groups. Only 292,000 Americans were listed,
while 916,000 were of either foreign birth or parentage.

The Germans, who included the Jews in that census, out-
numbered the Americans by almost 100,000 — a group which,
with the 315,000 Irish, the 45,000 Swedes and the 44,000 Nor-
wegians, Americanized itself quickly.

Of all the races the Germans and Irish intermarried most
readily with the "nativists." The Teutons, though speaking
a different tongue, were mainly Protestant in religion like the
Americans, and the Irish, though Catholic and thus at religious
odds with the Puritan civilization, spoke the English language.

J. C. Bidpath, the historian, studying Chicago in that year,
said that "the Irish here as elsewhere are common laborers.
Pipe in mouth they can be seen toiling on the public works,"
Ridpath could have seen them as contractors, lawyers, doctors,
merchants, too, if he had looked deeper. He found only some
15,000 negroes — "the severity of the climate repels the
Africans," he observed.

"Of the 54,000 Bohemians," he went on, "42,000 live in
Pilsen, their colony on Blue Island Avenue, three miles south-
west of Lakeside Park — a foreign city in which one walks for
blocks without hearing a word of English spoken." Most Bo-
hemian men he found to be lumber-workers at wages of $1,25
to $2.00 a day, "an economical people, owning their own
homes, prejudiced against paying rent. I heard that many of
them had left the Catholic Church and are drifting into scep-
ticism, atheism and nihilism."

Neither the Bohemians nor the 52,000 Poles were criminal
or squalid as Ridpath had expected to find them. They were
common laborers, but "cleanly and frugal."

The 10,000 Italians he discovered to be divided between
two large colonies, one on North Franklin Street, the other
on South Clark. "Many of them are wealthy," he observed,
adding, "Their race is hard to assimilate." A little later he
might have seen Italians at the head of great produce-concerns,
172

printing-plants, many businesses, showing that a sizeable por-
tion at least could assimilate most winningly.

As to the city itself, Ridpath, author of the most popular
history of the world in that day, thought it "the marvel not
only of our own age and century but of the modern world."

Climbing to the tower of the Auditorium, Ridpath looked the
city over and gasped much as Gurdon Hubbard had gasped
that time in 1818 when he climbed the tree to stare at the beau-
tiful prairie.

"Even from the dome of St. Peter's the landscape is by no
means so fine, so extended, so full of life and progress and
enthusiasm," he declared.

In 1890 some Chicagoans exulted because their city was sec-
ond in America in point of manufacturing ; others were proud
because the year had set a building record, 11,640 new struc-
tures costing $48,000,000; still others boasted of the strange
skyscrapers which Chicago had shown the world.

Not so high did Chicagoans hold their heads when the Illi-
nois and Michigan Canal was mentioned. That ancient water-
way had failed as a sewer and could never carry away enough
filth to solve Chicago's sanitation problems ; yet it could carry
enough in its slow current to fill canal towns with stench and
disease. Ordered by the State Legislature to dilute its sewage,
Chicago in '86 threw up its hands, wrote its old dreams off the
books, and abandoned its lifelong hopes for the canal. Sadly it
incorporated a drainage commission in that year, and, as the
'90s dawned, dug away at a fresh canal, one that would be
scientific, utilitarian, modern, with no memories of romance to
haunt its banks.

Millionaires were dying and leaving bequests to the city.
Walter L. Newberry, one of the signers of the city's first ap-
peal for chartering, had died in 1868, leaving $4,000,000 and
more from his real estate ventures, and by 1889 the wearisome
legal squabbles that had withheld these funds were adjusted,

173

$2,000,000 going into a "scholar's library," directed by Wil-
liam F. Poole, head of the Chicago Public Library and himself
"the most distinguished librarian in the world," as Chicago
boasted.

John Crerar, railway magnate of the '60s and one of the
bankers who had held up the city's credit in the panic of 577,
died in 1890, leaving thousands of dollars to Presbyterian
churches, orphanages, hospitals, Bible societies, the Historical
Society, literary societies, and the Y.M.C.A. and $100,000
for the erection of a colossal statue to Abraham Lincoln. Two
million dollars he gave to launch the scientific library which
bears his name.

Philip D. Armour, adding $900,000 to the $100,000 left by
his brother Joseph F., established in 1886 the Armour Mission
to which within the next five years was added the manual train-
ing school where youngsters of both sexes and all creeds and
races fitted themselves to advance in the commercial and indus-
trial city which Chicago had become.

William B. Ogden, who had come reluctantly from New
York to the swamp-town in his youth, had gone back to New
York, his fortune made, and dying there, left a will, which in
1891, fourteen years after his death, was settled to the advan-
tage of Chicago charities and institutions, notably Rush
Medical College, the Academy of Sciences, the Astronomical
Society, the University of Chicago, the Theological Seminary
of the Northwest and the Chicago Woman's Home.

The pioneers were going fast.

Long John Wentworth died in 1888, still amazed at what
his eyes had seen in fifty-five years of Chicago's life. Gurdon
S. Hubbard, never recovering from the loss and the shock
of the great fire, died, blind, in '86, and the young city sud-
denly realized what a beloved patriarch he had been.

In 1884, the year that his factory sent 55,000 reapers to the
farmers, Cyrus H. McCormick died, saying, "I know of no
better place to die than in harness." Death took Deacon Bross,
aged seventy-seven, on January 27, 1890. If the old "booster"

could have lived three years longer he would have seen "The
White City" on the Exposition grounds. No matter; he had
been looking at a more magnificent city in his dreams every day
for half a century. In November, 1891, there died Col. William
Hale Thompson, one of Admiral Farragut's naval officers, who
had come to Chicago in 1868 to deal in real estate, to help
found the State militia and, after his death, to leave much
wealth to his children, among whom was a son who bore his
name.

Vaguely Chicago began to understand that it had such a
thing as a history. Youthful as it was, it had, in 1891, firms
that were nationally known as old. H. O. Stone and Company
had been selling real estate for fifty-six years. A. C. McClurg
had been importing books since 1844*. Brunswick, Balke, since
1848, had been making the billiard tables which Puritan mor-
alists of the nation denounced as corrupters of youth. Rand
McNally's maps had been hanging on schoolroom walls since
1856. The trunks of C. A. Taylor, and the pianos and organs
of W. W. Kimball had been sold over the country since 1857.
Mandel Brothers had begun selling dry goods in 1855, the
same year in which Crane and Company had begun making
valves, Gage Brothers millinery, and Hibbard, Spencer, Bart-
lett and Company hardware. James Kirk had sold soap to the
nation since 1859, N. K. Fairbank since 1864. Lyon and Healy
had been music-men from 1864. Edson Keith and Company
were selling women's hats in '58, B. Kuppenhehner ready-made
clothes to men in 1863.

Franklin MacVeagh's wholesale groceries had risen in 1866.
Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company's department store, and
John M. Smyth's furniture-factory were twenty-four years old
in 1891. Marshall Field's "big store," as the rural visitors
called it in awe, had been so known since 1881, when Field had
taken the "mammoth emporium" into his own hands.

Since 1885 a boy from Springfield, Illinois, named Julius
Rosenwald, had been selling clothing wholesale in Chicago, and
in 1895 he would be vice-president and treasurer of Sears, Roe-

175

buck and Company, disputing with the twenty-two-year-old
firm of Montgomery Ward for everything that an American
farmer might order by mail— baby-buggies and harrows,
shrouds and corn-knives, groceries and mandolins, an infinite
variety of necessities and luxuries.

Chicago's "drummers" were legion in the valleys of the Ohio,
the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Colorado, the Red, the Cum-
berland, rivers ; they covered the continent, as commonplace on
the Pacific slope as on the Atlantic seaboard. So many of them
were boastful of their city that, when their spoutings were
added to the general enthusiasm which Chicagoans exuded, the
nation took to calling Chicago the Windy City. That term,
according to residents of the city itself, meant merely that the
west and north winds blew down its streets with more fury
than in any other town.

The world's greatest concentration of railroad freight-cars
was to be found immediately south of Chicago, it was said,
there where the big roads squeezed around the end of the lake,
heading eastward.

Each year, through the '80s, a new crop of boys in the mid-
lands, the West and the Northwest, began to listen hungrily
to the train-whistles calling on the horizon — trains bound for
Chicago and the bright lights — whistles that made the farm-
boys feel lonely, swinging there on the front gate at dusk-time
among the hopeless plaints of the crickets, the owls, the frogs.

Each year thousands of young men set their faces toward
the adventurous city while their mothers wept for fear of
Chicago's contaminating sins. Chicago was known as "a young
man's town."

Throughout the country Chicago's business men had, more
than ever before, the reputation of working harder and longer
than their colleagues of other cities. It was said that they
employed fewer secretaries, too, answered their own telephones
more often, talked with strangers more readily, listened to new
schemes more attentively, took more chances.

The city had a social world of which it was not ashamed, one

176

that had indeed been praised by the aesthetic Oscar Wilde when
that poet's American tour brought him to Chicago. Reclining
on a buffalo robe in the Grand Pacific Hotel, exquisitely clad in
pastel garments, knee-breeches, and long silk stockings, Wilde
sipped tea and told reporters what he thought of Chicago:
"Your machinery is beautiful. . . . Your society people have
apologized to me for the envious ridicule with which your news-
papers have referred to me. . . . Your newspapers are comic
but never amusing. „ . . Your water-tower is a castellated
monstrosity with pepper boxes stuck all over it. . . , It is a
shame to spend so much money on buildings with such an un-
satisfactory result. . . . Your city looks positively too dreary
to me."

He closed his eyes at the mention of the stock yards and
looked sick.

A murmur had been rising about a national World's Fair
to commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of Columbus*
discovery of America. Across the Middle West the talk was
that Chicago would grab it. Chicago was that kind of a town.

The city's spokesmen fell upon Congress, whose committee
was listening to the various cities advancing their claims to the
honor of holding the Columbian Exposition. Driving with all
their famous energy and zeal, the Chicago "boosters5' told the
officials that Chicago was the place. It was a melting-pot of all
the races that had made the United States so magnificent a
nation, it was closer than any other large city to the center
of the country's population, a mythical spot some two hundred
miles south and a little east. It had the hotel rooms, the wealth,
the enterprise and, what was more important, spacious lake-
frontage along which the White City might take limitless form.

They won, and, as the city set to work to raise the money,
gamblers, side-show men, saloon keepers, procurers, pick-
pockets, "madams," circus-owners, confidence men, all rushed
to the city. Beside them raced people of more respectable am-

177

bitions, realtors, concessionaires, merchants, widows eager to
open boarding-houses — everybody anxious to stake out a claim
before the rush of gold struck the city.

In the fall of '92 the city felt as if it were becoming a
Western town again, free and easy, high, wide and handsome,
young and reckless, and, in such a mood, it wanted Carter
Harrison in the mayor's chair once more. Something of the
West was in him, something dashing and democratic, big and
magnificent, some fire a little too hot to keep within rigidly
conventional confines. He was moral, he was honest, but he had
an imagination and gusto that more Puritan mayors had
lacked. Pour terms as mayor he had served already — from
1879 to 1887 — and grand tradition that he was, the city
wanted him to be the symbol of its expansive spirit in the hour
of its greatest glory.

The midlands, reading of his candidacy, guessed that he
would win and that Chicago in Fair-time would be wide-open
and thrilling. People said that Harrison would see to it that
the city was brilliant, exuberant, triumphant, even if there
was an overabundance of "sporting life." Everything would
be gay.

Many a pious midlander secretly hoped that Chicago's
night-life would be turned on full blast during the Fair. Then
a sober villager could have fun on his trip to the Exposition.
Salving his conscience by resolute attendance upon the educa-
tional exhibits, he could, in the cool of the evening, look in upon
the shameful glories of the wicked city.

Down in Marion, Indiana, one day, a village newsboy, Otto
McFeely, later to become editor of an Oak Park newspaper
which Chicago knew as "the world's largest suburban weekly ,"
stood on a street-corner, listening to the Hoosiers talking about
the Columbian Exposition that was soon to open in Chicago.

One Marion man said to another, "If Old Carter Harrison's
elected mayor, I'm goin' to Chicago to the Fair, but Pm goin*
to wear nothing but tights and carry a knife between my teeth
and a pistol in each hand/'
178

PART TWO

CHAPTER I

"N a cold and cloudy day in January, 1891, a dozen or more
architects stood on the bleak beach about seven miles south of
the heart of Chicago. They watched the gray rollers come in
and gazed dubiously at a vast tract of snow-covered sand,
broken by ridges and by ragged patches of wild oak.

A noted Boston architect, muffled against the blasts, climbed
on a pier and called down to the leader of the party :

"Do you mean to say that you really propose opening a
Fair here by '93?"

"Yes," replied this leader, "we intend to."

"It can't be done," said the Bostonian.

"That point," retorted the other, "is settled."

The gentleman who declared it settled tells the story himself,
almost literally as above. It is taken from the reminiscences of
Daniel H. Burnham,1 who missed few of the problems and
none of the glory of the World's Columbian Exposition. On
that January day he had assembled for the first time in
Chicago the group of great artists in design who had joined
the seemingly impossible enterprise of "opening a Fair here
by 593." When he said it was settled, it was. The site looked
hopeless ; the difficulties were appalling ; the time too short. All

iQubted in Daniel Hudson Burnham; Architect, Planner of Cities, by
Charles Moore (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co.).

181

the elements were present for a typical Chicago problem. But
to the sceptic Mr. Burnham returned what was, at that time
at least, a typical Chicago answer.

About a year later this tall, round-faced, moustached gentle-
man with a square chin in which lurked a dimple, showed an-
other and larger group of visitors what was doing in Jackson
Park. This was a crowd of about a hundred overcoated, silk-
hatted, scrutinizing, and self-important representatives of all
the States. The National Commission had come to see how this
Fair of "theirs" was getting on. Having been feted no end
by Chicago politicians and citizens, having heard and returned
vast quantities of oratory, they had got down to business.

Director of Construction Burnham, supported by his staff
and smiling officials of the Chicago end of the management,
was delighted to show the legislative gentlemen about. He led
them along miles of plank, laid upon the treacherous sands
and squashing ominously in the February mud* He pointed
out how a canal, a lagoon, a "wooden island," and other fea-
tures of that memorable landscaping were taking form. With
gestures of his long arms he indicated great, ghostly skeleton
shapes grouped after a careful pattern, yet so enormous that
they seemed like mountains upraised passionately by Nature
herself.

The visitors saw "floors as broad and as wide as truck farms.
They saw arching domes, netted with threads of steel, so far
up in the cold fog that the moving workmen seemed like flies
crawling on a ceiling. There were broad avenues heaped high
with construction-material and flanked on either side by tower-
ing walls of new timber."

There loomed before the amazed Congressmen, continued
this reporter, "a behemoth-structure covering some thirty-two
acres. The Capitol building at Washington if set down on the
floor of this monster [the Manufactures Building] would be
something like a peppermint drop in a frosted cake." The
thing was actually coming to pass. And it was astoundingly
182

larger, more complex, and more prophetic of beauty than any-
body— that is, any Congressman — had fancied it.

Mr. Burnham was at that time in mid-career, with a record
of Chicago masterpieces which made him and his associates
the natural leaders in the World's Fair construction. He and
his partner, John W. Root, had joined their slim fortunes less
than two years after the great fire, when Burnham was twenty-
six years old and Root four years younger. They began in a
little room, stove-heated, for which they paid $20 a month
rent. Profiting by the frantic rush to rebuild the city, and
pulling through the hard times of '73 somehow, the young
partners found themselves in clover with the arrival of the
prosperous ?80s. Burnham was the business-getter of the firm;
Root inclined to stick to the designing room. Their reputation
reached the East, yet they chose to give their talents mainly
to the West.

Soon arrived the era of skyscrapers. Burnham and Root
designed the first very tall building — the Montauk Block, a
"monster" of ten stories. It was the first building in the coun-
try set upon "spread foundations," of concrete and railroad
rails. They followed this with such achievements as the Rook-
ery and the first section (sixteen stories) of the enormous Mo-
nadnock Block. Two other pioneering architects — W. L. B.
Jenney and William Holabird, heads respectively of Jenney
and Mundie and Holabird and Roche — had the glory of using
steel-frame construction for the first time in history. Jenney
designed the Home Insurance Building, partly a steel skeleton.
Then Holabird built an all-steel building, and at the same time
was developed the "curtain of stone" process. A Minneapolis
man, L. S. Buffington, had already patented a similar idea,
but Chicago got real results, thus blazing the way once more.
Naturally, Burnham and Root adopted and enlarged the proc-

133

ess, and their enterprise, stopping little short of the clouds,
made a success of the twenty-one story Masonic Temple.

It was, then, two of the ablest and best advertised Chicago
architects, and two men, moreover, of comparative youth, who
were selected to see that the World's Fair was built according
to the vast general plan. But Root never had a chance to put
his fiery soul into it. His death early in 1891 left Burnham to
bear the burdens and reap the glory. It also brought into the
picture several men, such as Charles H. McKim and Charles
B. Atwood, for whom the opportunities might not have been
so great had Root lived.

Burnham, sorrowing, went ahead bravely with the work of
organizing, harmonizing, crushing through prejudices. He
chose an able assistant, Ernest R. Graham. He fought and won
a battle with the large and hard-headed group of Chicago busi-
ness men composing the building and grounds committee, per-
suaded them to give up the idea of competitive designs and to
adopt his plan of inviting a selected list of architects. He then
picked the architects — four from the East and six from the
West — and began to convert them. For some of the Easterners
needed converting. They were sceptical about the time avail-
able. They were sceptical as to whether the money would be
raised. They were "very busy.'5 However, Burnham, using his
combination of humor and exhortation, captured them all,

In the meantime a civic patriot and beauty-lover named
James W. Ellsworth, of the World's Fair Board, scored a good
one by persuading Frederick W. Olmstead, the great land-
scape-designer, to tackle Jackson Park, with an eye not only
to the immediate purpose but also to permanent beauty.
Olmstead was dubious. He had planned Washington Park,
and he knew Jackson. "You can have fifteen million and a
free hand," Ellsworth is reported to have promised, though
Lyman J. Gage, president of the Chicago board, was pulling
his beard. Olmstead agreed, and, glorying as they all did
sooner or later in the miracle-making of those two years, set
to work to change a waste of sand, where little would grow and
184

floods were frequent, into something finer than the Luxem-
bourg. His expert assistant caused whole acres of sand to be
sliced from the surface, and carloads of loam were dumped
there; near-by lakes were searched for beautiful plants and
ferns ; flowering shrubs were carried miles to beautify lagoons
and the "wooded island."

Soon came Augustus St. Gaudens, enlisted under the Burn-
ham colors. A reserved and somewhat eccentric genius, taci-
turn in crowds, he was, nevertheless, with Burnham to excite
him, a powerful helper and suggester. Moreover, he brought
into the effort such sculptors as Frederick MacMonnies, Daniel
C. French, Paul Bartlett, Karl Bitter, and many others; all,
like Chicago's own sculptor, Lorado Taft, glad to get St.
Gaudens' ideas and to refer delicate questions of taste to him.
Working happily with the forces of art, too, was Frank D.
Millet as "director of color." His engagement followed a small
collision between Burnham and the previous "director of
color," who, because of a decision made without him, held
himself slighted.

"I told him," relates Mr. Burnham, "that I saw it dif-
ferently. He then said he would get out, and he did."

Director Burnham did not have to be "hard-boiled" with his
troupe of architects. They were all too much thrilled over the
prospect of being able, at last, to design great buildings after
their heart's desire and practically regardless of cost. Before
many months had passed, they had become so inspired by
Burnham's appeal for teamwork, and by the grandeur of the
whole dream (and, incidentally, such choice lunches had they
enjoyed at Chicago's swaggerest restaurant, Kinsley's), that
they were even ready to modify their designs where necessary.
Difficulties of policy and of taste vanished before this spirit,
in those meetings which were referred to as the most notable
gatherings of artists for centuries. Inspirations popped out;

185

such as the one that all the buildings should be white, and the
decision to give them a uniform cornice-height. Perhaps greater
than all, for many of these intense and historically-minded
men, was the realization that what was really being accom-
plished was a new epoch in American architecture, — the epoch
of the classical, replacing the Romanesque as well as other less
worthy motives in design.1

These were the chief architects, with the buildings originally
assigned to them :

Richard W. Hunt, New York: Administration Build-
ing

McKim, Mead and White, New York: Agriculture
George B. Post, New York: Manufactures and Lib-
eral Arts

Peabody and Stearns, Boston: Machinery
Van Brunt and Howe, Kansas City: Electricity
Jenney and Mundie, Chicago: Horticulture
Henry Ives Cobb, Chicago: Fisheries
S. S. Beman, Chicago: Mines and Mining
Adler and Sullivan, Chicago: Transportation
Burling and Whitehouse, Chicago : Venetian Village
(not built)

These individuals and firms accepted responsibility for the
principal structures, only a few out of the hundreds that were
to stand within the grounds. But much of the designing even-
tually fell into the hands of the gentle, casual Charles B.
Atwood, a being so little known, comparatively, and with so
little "front,55 that Mr. Burnham came near not engaging him
at all. It was Atwood who, in an emergency caused by the illness
of another architect, produced in haste, and with the fire of a
positive inspiration, the outlines of the Art Palace. It alone,
of the major buildings, survived 593. Opinions of its beauty

iSee The Story of Architecture in America, by Thomas Tallmadge; W. W,
Norton & Co.

186

have but gained warmth during a generation. That building
which once housed $1,000,000 worth of the world's art is now
to be Chicago's Industrial Museum, owing to the generosity
of Julius Rosenwald.

Building the World's Fair, as Mr. Burnham saw it, "con-
sisted of reclaiming nearly seven hundred acres of ground, only
a small part of which was improved, the remainder being in a
state of nature and covered with water or wild-oak ridges. In
twenty months this must be converted into a site suitable for
an exposition of the industries and the entertainment of rep-
resentatives of all the nations of the world. On its stately ter-
races a dozen palaces were to be built — all of great extent and
of high architectural importance — these to be supported by
two hundred other structures. Great canals, basins, lagoons
and islands were to be constructed. The standard of the entire
work was to be kept up to a degree of excellence which should
place it on a level with the monuments of other ages."

In a passage summing up what was done, Mr. Burnham
wrote:

"During the storms of Summer, through frosts of Winter,
all day, all night, week in and week out, for two years the little
band of American boys ran the race for victory with Father
Time, and won it. Without looking for or expecting compen-
sation at all equal to the services they rendered, without jeal-
ousy, with eager willingness, these men were ever to be found.
They showed what to me is the greatest heroism, forbearance
and constant helpfulness."

Yet there was another kind of heroism being shown, as the
buildings rose, were clothed with walls and roofs, were plas-
tered with "staff" and painted with jets of white paint blown
through hose. There were heroes fighting the cold and the
perils ; there were men like sailors climbing among the girders ;
there were foremen and subordinate artists and what not who

187

should have had a medal apiece. Not that they were always
cheerful. There were strikes galore, and near-rebellion. But
the work went on.

The Winter task of 1891-1892 was severe; that of 1892-
1893 even worse. In cold weather few bleaker spots can be
found than a sandy beach along Lake Michigan. The advance
troops of this World's Fair army had to flounder in icy bogs,
dig in earth hardened by frost, and in milder weather face
virtual quicksands. Horses sank leg-deep in the mud ; vehicles
bringing lumber, or hauling the soil and plants needed by
Mr. Olmstead, had to have temporary plank-roads. There came
heavy snowstorms, when the weight of drifts crushed in glass
skylights, or even roofs. There were thaws and cold rains when
volumes of water started leaks here and there, or almost threat-
ened to wash the smaller buildings into the lake.

And then, driven at such speed and working often on details
of construction far from customary — so many bold ideas were
being tried out — the seven thousand or more workmen faced
a constant risk of accident. That casualty-record was high,
as seen today; though at the time it seemed "low — consider-
ing." During 1891 over seven hundred accidents to workmen
were recorded. Eighteen died.

Other armies of men, engaged in the city-wide work of
preparation, were toiling on railroad and street-car improve-
ments. Still others were hurling together flimsy hotels or room-
ing-houses.

Chicago of '92 worked as it never had worked since the days
following the great fire.

188

CHAPTER II

JL HE Chicago of that period had excited the notice of the
world, as the city had during its first magical growth, as it
had in >71.

Capture of the Fair, accomplished despite libels and double-
dealing on the part of other cities (yes, St. Louis too), the
magnitude of the whole venture — these things excited a heated
interest in publicists and editors, writers, musicians, would-be
exhibitors everywhere. A white glow of publicity beat upon
the Western capital. It towered before the gaze, an obvious
mark for the admiring, the thoughtful, or the patronizing
scrutiny of the monocled magazine writer or the newspaper
hack.

What was this Chicago, after all?

It was a city which had accomplished Herculean feats, and
was continually facing new ones. It had scored conspicuous
failures, also. It was a city which dominated a wide-spread
valley, and was the goal of great fleets of ships. It had money
and power. Both of these it wasted as it chose. It pulsed with
complex human energies ; it was ouick to adopt new inventions

189

and apply new ideas. At the same time, it was miserably organ-
ized. Politically, it was a village many times magnified. Parts
of it were most uncomfortable to live in. And it was very
sinful. The Eastern writers did not always observe these con-
trasts.

Divest present-day Chicago of all except a handful of sky-
scrapers, of a legion of apartment buildings, of the elevated
railway "loop," of the great boulevard improvement and the
splendid lake-front park, of the far-spreading "centers/5 or
little cities, that have grown like mushroom-patches in recent
years; take away automobiles, electric cars, and many bril-
liantly illumined signs (especially those of "movie palaces") —
and you begin to get a picture of the Chicago of 1892.

Its streets were paved largely with cobblestones or cedar
blocks. Away from the business center, the sidewalks were
usually of wood, many of them dilapidated and uneven in level.
"Downtown," the walks were mostly made of huge stone blocks,
and many of them stretched narrowly along the structures,
four, five, or six stories tall, drab and humble buildings, that
filled most of that region. Above these towered the Montauk
Block and the Home Insurance Building, the skyscraper
pioneers, the Rookery, the Monadnock and Old Colony and
others, — and higher than all rose the Masonic Temple, a won-
der of wonders, a theme for sermon and vaudeville quip alike.
Its building during 1890 and '91 had been watched by thou-
sands. It was the tallest building in the country — and Chicago
felt it was entitled to the tallest, nothing less. Meantime,
farther south, in fact so far south it "would never pay," some
sceptics said, was that other recent and tremendous creation —
the Auditorium Building. Nothing so great had ever been
dreamed of by Chicagoans, before 1889, when the Auditorium
was finished; a hotel, opera house, and office building in one,
and all the finest possible ! Ferdinand W. Peck, son of a pioneer

190

of the '30s, was its financial "father" ; Adler and Sullivan de-
signed it.

The dedication in December brought President Harrison,
Vice-President Morton, and officials from everywhere. Gover-
nor Pifer spoke. Patti sang "Home, Sweet Home," and played
Juliet in the first opera given*

It was related that, looking over the dedication crowd, Presi-
dent Harrison whispered to the Vice-President: "New York
surrenders — eh, Mr. Morton?"

Yet the Auditorium towered above a city still comparatively
primitive.

In those days there were horsecars to ride on, for those who
could not afford carriages, or hacks at fifty cents to a dollar
an hour. On a few main streets ran the cable-car lines, a
product of genius — or of the Devil. It took the strength of
giant "grip-men," who always stood out in the open, to seize
the cables with a clutch and start the cars. In Winter they
muffled themselves in fur coats, while in the closed car to the
rear passengers sat with their feet buried in straw. Those trains
attained the terrific speed of nine or ten miles an hour. New
York envied this record, according to Julian Ralph, noted
journalist, who also wrote that the cable-cars "go with a racket
of gong-ringing, a grinding and whir of grip-wheels. They
distribute the people gradually, and while they occasionally
run over a stray citizen, they far more frequently clear their
way by lifting wagons and trucks bodily to one side as they
whirl along."

Along the main river-channel, whose recent improvement has
been so radical and splendid, ran the South Water Street of
the markets — a mad, but savory, jumble of fruit- and produce-
houses, a tangle of wagons and traders.

Leading over the river, where now the great two-level bridge
crosses, was an old swing-bridge continually overcrowded, and
always open at the wrong time.

The district it led to was a residence, rather than a business

191

district; very close by was a vicious slum, and adjacent, also,
a "foreign quarter" where murder was common enough. On the
West Side were patches of vice and poverty since eliminated;
but there were also boulevards and "squares" now yielded to
vice and poverty.

In a part of the South Side lived the noted and wealthy
citizens, such as the Fields, Armours, and Pullmans. Potter
Palmer, however, had pioneered five years before, building a
castle in the "near" residence section north of the river. This
section is now already giving way to hotels and apartments,
while the Prairie Avenue district of the South Side is now an
area in transition, a region of sad old eyeless houses, or heaps
of stones being leveled by the wrecker.

Par out to the south, so far as to seem almost inaccessible,
were two patches of wilderness in which miraculous things were
being done. First, in Jackson Park, the World's Fair enter-
prise. Next, on the other tract a mile or so to the west, a new
university, or rather, the reincarnation of an old one. Some
ten acres of sand-lot, covered with chickweed and tin cans, was
being reclaimed, filled in, planted to lawn; and there were
rising the forerunners of a noble group of gray, red-tile-roofed
academic halls. Over the first of these enterprises presided the
famous architect Burnham. Over the other was the domination
of a restless, determined teacher of Old Testament literature,
William Rainey Harper.

To thousands of Chicago's residents of '92 the two great
undertakings — the big show and the big university — were
remote and legendary.

The actual history of a city depends very much on the
welfare of such thousands ; but the written record often ignores
them — the swarm whose life is nothing but a round of desperate
toil, of shifts to keep the family under a roof, to solve the
humblest, simplest problems of existence. In this swarm belong
192

not only the bitterly poor, but the outrageously overworked.
Chicago of '92 had more of this sort than the Chicago of 1929.
A writer of the former period remarked that "leisurely quiet
does not exist in Chicago even for men in a position to com-
mand it." It was true that even the wealthiest citizens of that
day drove themselves hard; it was probably equally true that
they drove the workingman and workingwoman without ruth,
and with little real knowledge of the severity of life among the
wage-earners. The industrial mogul of those days had not yet
begun to realize that higher pay and shorter hours are "good
for business." To him the eight-hour day represented anarchy.
And as for wages, one could get machinists for $2.40 a day,
bricklayers and masons for $4» a day, carpenters for $2.50 or
$3. The packer could hire medium-skilled men for from $1.25
to $2, and teamsters for from $9 to $12 a week. Such wages,
it is true, were partly offset by the comparatively low cost
of living ; yet, even in ?92, twenty or twenty-five dollars a week
did not make lif q entirely smooth and pleasant.

While work was plentiful — and it remained so during *92 —
there was no abnormal amount of sheer poverty in Chicago.
The thriftier races — Germans, Scandinavians, and the British
nationals — were dominant. Only in certain areas of the city,
whither had floated the less capable, less reliable, sometimes
even subnormal and criminal sort of poor devils, were there
actual "slums." Those were bad enough. In them people slept
on curbstones or on balconies belonging to some one else; or
forty families were crammed into a three-flat building ; or chil-
dren were turned outdoors because there was no place for them
to sleep. The city had plenty of beggars, seldom bothered by
the police. Canal Street and West Madison Street were then,
as for years later, stamping-grounds for job-seekers and areas
of lodging-houses, 15 cents a night and up. The city had then
the institution, since quite gone, of the ragged and pitiable
newsboy, who, if he could not get into the "home," found a
corner in some loft. It was common in those days to find vaga-
bonds warming themselves on gratings over an engine-room.

193

And then, speaking of poverty and misery, there was at
high tide, in the early 90s, the amazing system of sweatshops;
amazing because of the cruelty of the bosses and the slavish-
ness of the workers. There were girls in these shops gaining
as little as 25 to 40 cents a day. Skilled workers often received
$5 to $6 a week, or less. Some of them "lived" on $4. Here is
a weekly budget of a workingman in one of the less skilled
trades :

Rent $2

Food, fuel, light 4

Clothes 2

Beer or spirits 1

In those days beer was ten cents a pitcher; but then, coal
was only three dollars a ton.

When the task of earning a living pinched so hard, the em-
ployment of children reached a point that scandalized thinking
people and brought a reform. Stunted youngsters sat at
benches packing things, or labored perilously at machines.
In grimy factories — sometimes fire-traps — hordes of little
people worked for trifling wages. And in the stores — Chica-
goans could, as Mrs. Florence Kelley wrote, "stand on any
one of the main thoroughfares on a morning between 6.30
and 7.30 o'clock, and watch the processions of puny children
filing into the dry-goods emporiums to run, during nine or
ten hours — and in holiday seasons twelve and thirteen hours —
a day to the cry, 'Cash!' "

The spectacle of exhaustion and disease among the children
became too much to endure. During 1892 the movement to
protect them became powerful, and while the World's Fair was
thrilling people at large, a law quietly passed the Legislature,
in July, 1893, which fixed the minimum age of labor at four-
teen- Other safeguards were added, despite a battle put up by
many manufacturers.

194

The West Side, especially, rejoiced. "Over the river," in
this cosmopolitan city, dwelt hordes who had been lured from
the old countries by steamship companies and labor agen-
cies, if not by their own capacity for illusion. They were
plunged into a struggle which for them was pioneering as
desperate as that of the covered-wagon immigrants of the ?30s.
They had to give time to racial quarrels. They were preyed
on by gangs.

A few miles from the beautiful lake which some of them
scarcely ever saw, within a short walk of the proud dwellings
of Michigan Avenue, Prairie Avenue, Ashland Boulevard, they
worked, loved, dreamed — and multiplied. They lived back of
lumber-yards, under the shadow of factories, along railroad
tracks of the colorful but neglected "West Side." And to the
south, in areas "back of the yards," dwelt the thousands who
were ruled, and more or less fed, by smoking packing-houses.
And far to the southeast, on lowlands dominated by the count-
less chimneys of the steel-works, existed another great colony
of those hardy, slovenly, and plucky Europeans.

In that long, sprawled-out city there were perspectives
appalling to visitors from more compact and graceful places.
Walter Crane, a sharp-eyed Englishman, wrote of riding (to
reach his host's house) on "a long, broad, straight road,
crossed at right angles by others. „ . . The street sometimes
breaks off short on the prairie — to be continued when it pays.
Along these straight roads are planted at regular intervals
excessively irregular houses . . . the genius of the American
architect breaking out in weird, conical towers, vast verandahs,
mansard roofs. . . . The main roads are bordered with huge
telegraph poles." Another writer commented: "Chicago is laid
out in parallelograms; a city made by the surveyor and the
architect,, who have mapped it out with a carpenter's rule."

A thing which came much closer to home than lack of beauty

195

was the peril to life and limb. Not a single railroad liad yet
been elevated, though "steps had been taken." Many tracks ran
at grade in or near the central district. Every year several
hundred persons were killed at these grades. Horsecars bumped
over long gridirons of tracks, dependent on gates and watch-
men; and once in a while a train would crush a car to splinters.
Besides, the Juggernaut cable-cars took their toll; teamsters
were knocked off their tall seats; children were ground under
wheels.

As for the city's health in general, it was better than that
in any other of the large American cities, yet there was tragedy
enough. During 592 there died from diphtheria 1,548 persons;
from pneumonia, the "dirt disease," 2,397; from tuberculosis,
the disease of "bad air," 2,382 ; from typhoid fever, the disease
of bad water and milk, 1,489. Yet 1892 showed an improve-
ment. There had been a total of recorded deaths of 27,754
during 1891 ; a rate of 22.2 per 1,000. In 1892 there were
26,000 and the rate fell to 19.93. But the mortality among
children, one to five years old, was over 4,000 in a twelvemonth!
Diphtheria antitoxin was a new and suspicious thing. As for
the milk supply, it lacked any such supervision and treatment
as it gets today. Not more than twenty years had passed since
Pasteur had revolutionized the science of bacteriology,

What were the interests of this mass of people?

Well, they had given thought for a few weeks to the nomi-
nation of Grover Cleveland in a new and flimsy Wigwam, built
for the purpose on the lake-front. They had read the great
speeches Bourke Cockran and Henry Watterson made on that
occasion, and had smiled on hearing how the rain penetrated
the miserable roof and compelled the chairman, at one session,
to wield his gavel standing under an umbrella.

The swarm had other preoccupations. There were nearly
two thousand gambling houses in which it could waste its
196

money. There were whole avenues lined with brothels; at the
approaches to every railroad station lurked street-walkers.
Both gambling-houses and brothels "paid protection," and
few people cared ; certainly not the swarm.

There were thrilling sporting-events, much more marvelous
to read about than the newspaper accounts of "progress on the
World's Fair." John L. Sullivan, the 312-pound idol of the
prize-ring, was beaten that September at New Orleans by the
189-pound Corbett. Nancy Hanks trotted a mile in 2.04. A
bicyclist did a mile in 1.56. In that September, a freak vehicle
called a "horseless carriage" appeared in the downtown streets.
It was an electric car with a long steering-handle; it was pre-
posterously slow and awkward. A small part of the swarm,
standing on the curb, watched the abortive efforts of this
pioneer automobile, too surprised even to jeer.

But there were events in that year more expressive of the
period. The Summer months saw the first work on elevation of
railroad tracks. A continuous pounding from the newspapers
had forced the City Hall to establish a Terminal Commission.
Its report was not ready until the following year, and then
it turned out that the program offered went too far; the ex-
pense would have ruined the railroads. But meantime the
Illinois Central, forced to bear the brunt of hauling people
from downtown to the World's Pair grounds, accepted an
ordinance passed in May, 1892, for elevation, and the mighty
job of raising the parallel ribbons of rails went on simultane-
ously with the completion of the exposition structures.

In September came another portentous event. Six years
after the city's aldermen had taken their first vote for a
Drainage Commission, precursor of the Sanitary District with
its elective board and taxing powers, the time had come to
dig the first earth for the great canal. Political wrangles,
engineering disagreements, financial problems, all had been
dealt with and temporarily conquered. It was a joyous party
of officials and invited guests that journeyed the thirty-one
miles southwest to the boundary between Cook and Will Coun-

197

ties, to the point where the old historic "divide" rose almost
imperceptibly among the meadows. Fifty-sis years had gone
by since, by steamer, stage, and carriage, Chicagoans had
flocked to this region to break ground for the earlier and less
ambitious canal. Now five hundred or more out of the miluon-
odd population occupied a special train. The Sanitary District
trustees stood at the point selected for the first cut. A cloud
of city officials, business men, and others completed the audi-
ence. They had assembled, as the dark-faced Teutonic presi-
dent, Frank Wenter, said, "to officially inaugurate this great
work connecting Lake Michigan with the Mississippi, to create
a condition that undoubtedly in ages gone by existed, to tap
the great reservoirs above that will swell and stimulate that
sluggish stream of the Illinois, and with proper assistance
make it the great waterway from the lakes to the gulf of
Mexico." Lyman Cooley, the gray-haired engineer of the board
who had stubbornly contended from the first for a really great
canal and had been thwarted by penurious trustees of those
years, spoke of how "man's creative intelligence can remedy
nature's caprice, restore the ancient outlet." A pioneer named
Fernando Jones, who was present when the first canal was
opened in '48, "reminisced." More speeches, and then President
Wenter thrust into the earth a nickel-plated shovel — and the
great canal was begun.

A month later, in this year of mighty beginnings, came
another inauguration. This time it was the opening of the
university. The leaders of the Baptist denomination, whose
University of Chicago on Senator Douglas' land had perished
in the '80s, had enlisted the aid of John D. Rockefeller for a
new one. He had given $600,000, and the Baptists had raised
$4*00,000, both within and without the denomination. Marshall
Field had donated a ten-acre site. Then Dr. Harper had be-
come president, Mr. Rockefeller had given $2,000,000 more,
and Chicago men of wealth rushed to help the enterprise with
such enthusiasm that another million for buildings and endow-
ments was obtained in ninety days. On the first of October,
198

1892, students walked across the sandy, ragged "campus" and
over planks into a partly completed building called Cobb Lec-
ture Hall, after Silas B. Cobb, principal donor. (He who in
youth took that terrible trip to Chicago on $7 capital.) In
the building workmen still toiled at the ceiling; professors
dodged ladders ; there was a pounding and a clamor. President
Harper stood on the platform in the room that served for a
chapel, surveyed the crowd from behind his gleaming spec-
tacles, and said, "We will sing the doxology, Traise God
from whom all blessings flow.' " A few more hymns, a Scrip-
ture reading, a prayer, and thus simply was a new leaf turned
in Chicago's educational advance. No procession, no speeches,
no special train. The great Chicago swarm scarcely knew any-
thing was afoot.

What the "average man" was looking forward to was the
dedication of the World's Fair buildings. He could comprehend
the obvious, high-colored outlines -of the exposition project;
nearly everybody had bought stock in it, or at least cherished
a Columbian half-dollar. And nobody who could help it was
going to miss this dedication, no matter if it did come six
months ahead of the actual opening. Besides, interest had been
whetted by accounts of the great naval review in New York,
by the "grand ball" in Chicago's Auditorium, and by a glit-
tering military parade, applauded by throngs occupying side-
walks or hanging from window-ledges.

Thanks to the Fair's managers, few people who could ride,
walk, or hobble to the scene of the dedication exercises, October
21, went there in vain. "Let them all in," came the order.
They flowed into the muddy grounds, while the grand proces-
sion of officials, titled and ribboned ambassadors, religious dig-
nitaries of all faiths, and escorting troops passed over a wooden
bridge from railroad to auditorium.

The Manufactures building loomed there, a greater wonder
than the pyramids. Speakers and others filled a platform

199

seating as many as the average theater. Singers numbering
5,000 clustered on a tall rostrum. The "mob" sat or stood
below — twenty-five acres of people, said official reports.
"Nearly every man in the assemblage of 150,000 had a per-
sonal interest in the spectacle because he had sacrificed directly
or indirectly to promote its success. The thousands of singers
who had given their time and energies free, the Exposition
stockholders, 30,000 of them in all walks of life, the private
citizens whose taxes made up Chicago's contribution, the resi-
dents of every State and territory ... all these felt that it
was their Fair." So wrote The Chicago Record historian.

The crowd stretched in limitless perspective, a crazy-quilt
of many hues. There were seated thousands, and thousands
standing, and half crushed. Men and boys had crawled far
up among the iron trusses aloft, and hung there.

In that vast space John K. Fame's "Columbian March,"
played fortissimo by the musicians under Theodore Thomas'
baton, the choral rendition of Haydn's "The Heavens Are
Telling," and the "Hallelujah Chorus" rose in the ears of
many distantly and dreamily. As for the speeches, as for
the delivery of Harriet Monroe's "Columbian Ode," they were
scarcely audible beyond the nearest rows of the favored. Many
of those acres of people saw only a chin-bearded pigmy who
was George R. Davis, Director-General, rise and brandish his
arms. They saw Mayor Hempstead Washburne, Harlow N.
Higinbotham — president of the Exposition since the retirement
of Lyman J. Gage — the much admired Mrs. Potter Palmer,
president of the Board of Lady Managers, Thomas W. Palmer,
head of the National Commission, and finally Levi P. Morton,
Vice-President of the United States, rise in their places, far,
far away, gesticulate and retire. Perhaps not even a modern
amplifier could have carried well enough the words, "I dedicate
these* buildings to humanity." The trained voices of those two
orators, Henry Watterson and Chauncey Depew, reached a
little farther ; but as a feast of reason, for all except a fraction
of the crowd, the dedication was a failure.
200

But the lunch was a success. In the galleries, and at various
places outside the buildings, "light refreshments" were served
to the crowd, even the ticketless. A hundred thousand famished
people descended on the food, and seventy thousand of them
got some.

Weary from standing or sitting stiffly through hours of
inaudible oratory, yet preserved by some Providence from
being trampled to death or falling off the trusses, the Chicago
multitude went home, impressed, silent. It was freely published
that there had never been such a crowd under one roof in all
history.

201

CHAPTER III

down the slope of thirty-six years, the World's Co-
lumbian Exposition still forces the belief that, in many ways,
it was the most wonderful thing of its time. It became the
ruling passion of statesmen as well as architects, of religionists
as well as artisans, of merchants, painters, engineers, musi-
cians, soldiers, orators, and dukes. Its appeal reached the secret
workshops of the makers of delicate fabrics, of exquisite
jewelry. Not only the most civilized, but some of the most
barbaric, peoples of the earth were moved to have a share in
this "show."

Only the other day an explorer from Africa told ho^ an
old chieftain whom he had just seen in his wilderness remem-
bered the name of Chicago — and not because • of its murders,
but because of "your World's Fair."

Useless to try a resurrection of that image of beauty ! There
are stored away, in libraries or elsewhere, large folios of paint-
ings and photographs. Go and see them! . . . But the real
colors, the multiform activity, murmurs of fountains, tramp
of the multitudes, all the sparkle and thunder of the throng.

are gone. Sound-recording was not yet adequate; the movies
were invented too late.

We have to look back upon the Fair critically, seeing in it
a world-impulse, a culmination of dreams — dreams not typ-
ically Chicagoan. Destiny brought to this young city an ex-
plosion of idealism, produced a miracle, and then ordered the
miracle to disappear, leaving the sand-wastes to a new future.
Paul Bourget wrote in farewell to the exposition, "The White
City must disappear, while the Black City, which will endure
forever, is only at its commencement," Yet in one respect, in
city planning, the World's Fair left its impress upon Chicago.
As the sociologist Charles Zueblin saw it, "For the first time
in American history a complete city, equipped with all the
public utilities caring for a temporary population of thou-
sands, was built as a unit on a single architectural scale.
Unique in being an epitome of what we had done and a proph-
ecy of what we could do if content with nothing but the
best. . . it was a miniature of an ideal city; a symbol of re-
generation."

Along with the beauties of this ideal city came the loud
carnivals, the bands of fakers and "three-shell" men, the sala-
cious dancers, the hordes of harpies, to all of which people
who took the Fair as a circus had looked forward. The vis-
itors who wanted a "hot time5* were not disappointed. Yet
many of them must have been most impressed, after all, by
the grandeur of the picture — and by Chicago's grit. They
knew about the fund-raising valor of men like Lyman J. Gage,
Marshall Field, largest single subscriber for stock, Franklin
MacVeagh, and others.

At one time, after Congress had set $5,000,000 as the
figure Chicago should raise, it was found that New York could
furnish $10,000,000. Very well, Chicago would meet the ante ;
it did so, through sale of stock to middle-class folks, and by
bond issues. The Chicagoans, through their local board of
directors, had to "carry the weight of governmental suspicion,
hesitation, and indifference,5' wrote one of the leaders. "The

203

only anxiety of Congress was to escape expense." The local
corporation, standing in ill-defined relationship to the National
Commission, was forced sometimes to defy, and sometimes to
yield to, that large and unwieldy body; a multiplicity of com-
mittees, a mass of overlapping authority, and all the jealousies,
stupidities, and balkinesses of which overorganized human be-
ings are capable, cropped out during the months of high
pressure. Finally, the famous Chicago climate— truly wonder-
ful four or five months of the year— outdid the eccentricities
of people wearing titles and medals, and made it seem, during
one Winter, at least, as though the Fair would never open at
all. Storms, "cold spells, "wet spells," deluge from the skies,
hell underfoot, challenged the gritty men who had sworn to
"put it over.5*

When on May 1, 1893, the great invading army of Middle
Westerners, supplemented by people from many States, poured
into the grounds, they saw an Administration Building with
an exquisite dome higher than that of the Capitol at Wash-
ington, and in front of this the MacMonnies fountain, with
its graceful rowing maidens — acclaimed by St. Gaudens and
others as the masterpiece of masterpieces. They saw other
fountains, one on each side of the MacMonnies, then the
lustrous Grand Basin, with its peristyle at the eastern end,
and the Liberty statue upraised, but shrouded, waiting to
admire itself in the mirror of the basin. There were the vast
creamy flanks of Machinery Hall, Agriculture Hall, the Manu-
factures'and Mining Buildings; to the northwest, the Wooded
Island, the dome of the Arts Palace, and a city of structures
in which the classic motive faded out among bold and varied
conceptions expressed in State buildings.

It was a chill and misty Spring morning. All during the

early hours anxious people watched the clouds. The crowds

came under umbrellas. " Average people35 they, accustomed to

going afoot, to getting wet, to "pick-up" meals. There were

204

almost as many lunch-baskets as umbrellas. Father, mother,
and the children were prepared for a gorgeous picnic.

President Grover Cleveland was riding toward the grounds
in one of twenty-three carriages, drawn by high-steppers. At
his side sat President Thomas W. Palmer, of the National
Commission, and President Higinbotham, of the Chicago
Board, one time farm boy and dry-goods clerk, now a partner
of Marshall Field — gray-bearded, alert, with the face of a
scholar and artist. In other carriages, members of Cleveland's
Cabinet, World's Fair Directors, Governor Altgeld, General
Miles, the Duke and Duchess of Veragua — Mrs. Potter Palmer
sitting grandly at the latter's side — the Marquis de Barbales,
Don Cristobal Colon y Aquilera and his Dona, other Span-
iards— cheered by the crowds, five years later to be at war with
them.

And in the very last carriage, lifting his gala hat to those
multitudes who knew him far better than any of the others,
Carter H. Harrison the elder. He was a happy mayor. Four
terms he had served, and then given way to the inevitable;
but now he stood elected by a few hundred votes to be that
commanding figure, the World's Fair Mayor.

The jingling, bowing, and somewhat haughty procession
passed through the Midway Plaisance, where the variegated
nationals, the freaks, bevies of fakirs, waiters, dancers, and the
like, hailed nobility and officials as they passed. The Algerians
were ready to greet them with their yell, "which," as a writer
put it, "for penetrating power exceeded anything ever heard
in a political meeting." Donkey-boys flattened themselves to
earth. Tomtoms were beaten. Four lions of the Hagenbeck
show had been trained to roar horrifically while the president
passed; and doubtless they did.

Meantime the delighted crowd had been assembling in the
Court of Honor, facing the platform erected on the east front
of the Administration Building. They had come again, in
numbers three times greater than on the day of dedication,
drawn by the powerful magnets of curiosity, civic pride, and

205

adulation of celebrities, to see and hear what little they could.
The Court of Honor could hold them all, but the space near
the platform could not. That standing-room was a stretch of
mud, all around the silent MacMonnies fountain and far back
along both sides of the darkly glistening basin. It is said that
between four and five hundred thousand men, women, and
children were massed somehow in the area.

At first they spread out harmlessly to the eastward ; but as
the party of dignitaries mounted the platform there was a
rush in their direction by the scrambling thousands, splash-
ing through the mud, brandishing folded umbrellas — for the
sun had come out — elbowing, fighting, shouting. Choristers
essayed a "Columbian Hymn." Their voices were all but lost
in the clamor of the half-panicky mob. President Cleveland
and the Spanish nobles sat gazing in amazement upon what
was happening below. The luckiest spectators were those who
had climbed ropes to the pinnacles of Machinery Hall, or had
perched upon the dome of the Agriculture building.

All during the hymn, the spectacle down on the mud-flat
was like a scene from Dore. The huskies pressing toward the
platform elbowed women aside ; they broke through the defense
of Columbian Guards. Strong husbands lifted their wives up
shoulder-high, so that they could breathe. Crying children
were held aloft. Women with torn clothes climbed to the press-
stand and tried to clamber over the railing ; reporters dragged
to safety some who were fainting.

A blind minister rose to pray. He could not be heard for
the terrific yells from the fighting "audience," yells of "Stand
still i" "Get back; you're killing those women!" "For God's
sake — " Police crashed through to places where women, and
men too, lay underfoot, unconscious, and lugged them away on
stretchers or wheeled ambulances. Somewhere in the crowd
Jane Addams — not among those in carriages — f elt her purse
seized by a pickpocket. A staff officer of the Columbian Guard
thrust his sword between the "dip's55 legs, tripped him, and
hauled him off to the brig.

206

After all this, when records were made, there were listed
only seventeen who had fainted and none with bad injuries.

Director-General Davis rose by the table on which stood,
in a purple plush casket, an electric key to be pushed by Presi-
dent Cleveland. "It only remains for you, Mr. President . . .
commensurate in dignity with what the world expects. . . .
When you touch this magic key, the ponderous machinery will
start. . . ."

President Cleveland, fifty-six years old, but powerful,
ruddy, with a chest like a barrel, laid aside a silk hat a little
the worse for wear, and rose bowing.

His voice had such volume that many could hear him who
so far had not heard a word. The rest caught it in snatches :

"Stupendous results of American enterprise . . . Magnifi-
cent evidence of American skill and intelligence . . . Greet-
ings we extend to those of foreign lands . . . Popular educa-
tion . . . Stimulation of best impulses . . . Proud national
destiny . . . We have built these splendid edifices . , . Ex-
alted mission . . . Human enlightenment . . . Brotherhood
of nations . . . The machinery that gives life to this vast
exposition is now set in motion . . ,"

He touched the key. It was almost exactly noon.

The Stars and Stripes fluttered up the mast in the center
of the plaza, the red flag of Castile up another mast, and the
white initialed banner of Ferdinand and Isabella up another.
On all sides, on the tall domes and cornices of the buildings,
flags furled for hours now broke out. From the MacMonnies
fountain and its companions the white water gushed. The
shroud fell from the Liberty statue, and it glittered in the sun
to cries of «Ah-h-h!"

With all this rose the rumble of machinery set off by the
electric spark; from the lake came the booming of guns from
warships, starting flights of gulls from their beach coverts.

The curtain was up on the glorious spectacle. But just as
sometimes a piece in the orchestra thrusts an ominous motif
into an opening chorus, there appeared in the newspapers of

207

that afternoon dispatches from Wall Street saying: "The day
was one of great depression and considerable excitement. The
bearish feeling was very pronounced. Repeated raids were
made on leading shares . . ."

No sooner was the exposition open than "vexed questions"
assailed the doughty management.

One of them was distinctly an intrusion from outside, an ef-
fect of the financial panic that freighted the Wall Street dis-
patches with gloom. Within the exposition grounds was a
branch of a Chicago bank, The Chemical National. It had ac-
cepted deposits from exhibitors, including many foreigners.
(A Siamese exhibitor had $10,000 on the books.) Commission-
aires used it for convenience. Eight days after the Fair opened,
the downtown bank failed and the branch closed. It was a
crisis. Should the exposition management shirk responsibility
and let the exhibitors whistle for their money? President Hig-
inbotham said no. He spent the night telephoning to wealthy
friends. "You must help us guarantee the foreign deposits," he
pleaded. "How much?" they asked. "Total of around $60,000."
It was cigar-money for those men — Lyman Gage, John J.
Mitchell, George M. Pullman, Norman B. Ream, and the like.
The guarantee was ready by morning. The foreigners lost
nothing.

Another specter, much more complex, was already stalking —
the question of closing the gates on Sunday. Agitation had
begun long before the opening of the Fair. Congress had been
bombarded with huge petitions, behind which, boasted the
framers, stood "the full force of the church membership of the
United States." Swayed by the claim, the Congressmen, when
generously voting for the sale of $2,500,000 in Columbian
coins to help pay for the show, tacked on a provision that the
gates must be closed Sundays. But two months before the
epochal first of May, Congress passed another act which with-
208

drew $570,880 from the two and a half million for the ex-
penses of the commission on awards.

The Chicago directorate saw a loophole. It was perpetually
threatened with a huge deficit anyway; the shrewd business
men on the board believed that Sunday crowds would help pay
the bill. As it was officially phrased, however, the feeling was
that "the exposition should be permitted to exert its benign
influence on one day as well as another." Some one argued that
Congress, by diverting funds, had broken a contract. The sug-
gestion was seized on with gratitude. So, in the face of thun-
derings from the pulpit that a "heinous example of law-
breaking" was being set up, of jibes to the effect that rich men
were debasing the morals of the poor, the board opened the
gates on the third Sunday. But the "lid was on" most of the
show.

The crowds came but sparsely. They were not thrilled by a
curtailed World's Pair. And then the question got into the
courts. Lawyers now argued it instead of reformers. The di-
rectors found themselves faced with an injunction against clos-
ing, and one against opening. The solemn judgment of the
United States courts was invoked, and three district judges, in
a ten-thousand-word opinion, declared, "Close." Three higher
judges reviewed the order and reversed it. The directors bent
this way and that, according as the legal winds blew. They
faced contempt of court either way ; and, as it fell out, in try-
ing to obey one of the solemn orders to close, they ran foul of
the injunction forbidding them to do that very thing, and were
fined. A "unique and disagreeable experience," as Mr. Higin-
botham later wrote.

So was the "music row." During the early days of the Fair
certain Eastern piano firms, especially the Steinways, refused
to exhibit their products. Director Davis, compliant with the
protests of Western houses, ruled that no Steinway piano
should be used in the concerts which, with most ambitious and
intellectual programs, were to be given under the baton of
Theodore Thomas. Then Paderewski came to play with the

209

orchestra. He protested that he could play no other piano than
a Steinway! The fur flew. The angry Westerners appealed to
Davis; he took the case to the National Commission, which
tried to assume a jurisdiction over Thomas that it did not
have. Thomas, whose contract was with the local board, calmly
proceeded to give the concert, and "Paddy" played on a piano
smuggled into the hall at night. A Steinway it was.

Then the newspapers raged, going so far as to intimate
that Thomas was in some one's pay. He was haled before a
committee of the Commission. A question of a Chicago-made
harp which he was alleged to have barred was another count
against him, a wholly false charge. The grizzled, proud old
pioneer of Chicago music appeared before his judges, and he
said, according to the Chicago Record version :

"For forty years I have been before the American public as
an artist. I am an old man, sixty years old and nearing the
end of my course. I beg of you to consider that I value^my
reputation as a musician and leader more than any pecuniary
benefit I might derive from aiding any piano-firm."

Paderewski left the city, followed by newspaper editorials
which jeered at his long hair, his cloak, and his lady admirers.
Thomas' resignation was demanded; he ignored this. His con-
certs continued with the approval of his Chicago friends on the
directorate. But he was deeply wounded. In addition, the poor
early attendance at the Fair was ruining his fine plans for a
musical festival that would pass all records. In August, in a
letter which sadly recognized that "highbrow" music at the
Fair had failed, that the performances should be considered
"solely as an amusement," that expenses should be reduced — he
gave up his post. He closed with an offer to serve gratis,
"should any plans suggest themselves to you in furthering
which I can be of assistance." *

Troubles, major and minor, beset the management as sum-
mer advanced. There was a public quarrel in the woman's
board, the cause being almost indistinguishable amid the hys-
teria. Mrs. Palmer rose and referred darkly to "certain ladies

who mortify me." Staid members of the board wept. One cried
out to Mrs. Palmer, "You, our queen ! - " It blew over.

There was a strike of waiters in the restaurants on the Fair
grounds. They got their $15 a week. There was a robbery in a
jewelry exhibit; loot, two diamonds set in a riding-whip be-
longing to King Leopold, of Belgium. Then in July, a trag-
edy. The cold-storage warehouse, badly built, and carrying
three superfluous towers, caught fire. A company of firemen,,
led by an intrepid captain, ascended the tallest of the*Towers,
carrying hose, and were cut off by the flames. An immense
crowd — the total attendance that day was 130,000 — saw the
brave fellows slide down ropes, or leap into flames, and die.
They saw seventeen bodies carried away.

But calamity, bickerings, scandals, failed to check the en-
thusiasm of the public for this exposition, whose glories grew
upon them as they studied it. The times were bad, yet the
crowds came, growing from a fifty-thousand figure in May to
two hundred thousand in August. Farmers put new mortgages
on their acres. School-teachers spent the last of their savings
to journey to Chicago. Poor people of Chicago and elsewhere
managed to find fifty-cent pieces for admission. An old man,
leaving the Court of Honor with his wife, was heard to say,
"Well, Susan, it paid, even if it did take all the burial money."

No one could see it all. Ten thousand memories were borne
away by those who spent every day there. Memories of things
like these:

The Ferris Wheel, its cars climbing to a height of 264 feet
. . . the movable sidewalks on the pier . . . the Columbus
Caravels, that had sailed all the way from Spain . . . La Ra-
bida Convent ; Columbus' cannon, his contract with Ferdinand
and Isabella . . . the thirty-five-foot model of the British bat-
tleship Victoria ... the Yerkes telescope, built for the Uni-
versity of Chicago, and awaiting its observatory . . . the

Bethlehem steam-hammer, symbol of the "arts of peace"; the
huge Krupp guns, prophetic of war ... the glorious gilt
arch of the Transportation Building, Louis Sullivan's inspira-
tion ... the first locomotives, New York's De Witt Clinton
and Chicago's Pioneer ... the Streets of Cairo, the Irish
Village, Blarney and Donegal Castles, the Moorish Palace,
"Old Vienna," Laplanders, Arabs, American Indians ... the
Woman's Building (dedicated when Mrs. Palmer drove a
golden nail with a silver hammer); needlework by Queen
Victoria ... the Children's Building, its creche and its store
of toys . . . fifty thousand roses blooming on the Wooded
Island . . . rough diamonds from Africa ; a solid silver statue
frt6i Montana . . . Nicola" Tesla and "high tension cur-
rents"; a long distance telephone to New York! ... the Ad-
ministration Building seen at sunset from the Peristyle . . .
the glory of electric lights at night, five thousand arc-lights ;
illumination seen as beauty ... the $20,000 livestock show
... the immense grain and food show ... the gray Canary
diamond; Russian^ jades ; Sevres vases; Japanese enamels and
cloisonne vases; Chinese lacquer; Swiss watches; the Nur-
emberg "egg watch" . . . Parisian fashions, displayed on wax
figures that drew the stares of bumpkins . . . John Alden's
Bible; Miles Standish's pipe ... the battleship Illinois, the
reproduction of the cruiser Oregon,, which was soon to frighten
the Spaniards . . . fish, fish, fish, crabs, sharks, grampuses,
lazily flapping in their tanks . . . convent bells from Califor-
nia; the Cartagena church bell, 16th century . . . Mount
Vernon done over as the Virginia Building . . . Independence
Hall done over as the Pennsylvania Building, with the Liberty
Bell under a dome . . . Florida's reproduction of the old St.
Augustine fort . . . Boston's manor house; Louisiana's plan-
tation mansion . . . the Illinois Building, considered ugly, but
containing precious Civil- War memorials as well as symbols of
the farming State . . . reproduction of the salon at Versailles ;
Lafayette's sword . . . Germany's beautiful and characteris-
tic building, one of the few to be preserved ; destroyed by fire
212

in 1925 . . . the Swedish and Norwegian buildings, the
former built in Sweden and shipped in sections . . . the
Japanese house, still standing on the Wooded Island . . .
Brazil, celebrating Bolivar . . . the Ceylon Building, after a
Buddhist temple ; later to be John J. Mitchell's house at Lake
Geneva, Wisconsin . , . Haytian relics of Toussaint L'Ouver-
ture . . , the fake "Blarney stone," actually a Chicago pav-
ing-block . . . wheel-chairs, gondolas, Columbian Guards
strutting about, college-boy guides. . . .

There were memories of great "congresses," to which flocked
optimists from all countries. Now was the time to solve every-
thing. There was one congress of "strong-minded women," as
they were then known. Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, the Countess of Aberdeen, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe,
and many others whose names still mean something, were on
the program. Temperance reformers had a big time, with
Frances Willard and Archbishop Ireland as leaders. Social re-
formers followed suit, discussing such things as pauperism,
juvenile delinquency, prevention of crimes. Bankers met, but
Chicago bankers, preoccupied by the panic, had to stay at
their desks. And there were other meetings, culminating in the
vast Parliament of Religions, an assemblage of all faiths, of
all the greatest religious leaders — except the Archbishop of
Canterbury, who could not convince himself of the "parity" of
other faiths with his. He was not missed. Under the Rev. John
Henry Barrows,- Chicago silver-tongued preacher, all races,
creeds, and traditions got a hearing. All seemed to expect the
millennium — which did not arrive in 1893.

October arrived. The exposition was a success. October 9th
brought Chicago Day, over seven. hundred thousand paid ad-
missions, another vast and dangerous crowd; the folks didn't
get home until morning. The closing days approached. Some
sort of blaze of glory was appropriate. Then, just at the last,

213

an unknown being, a lean maniac with a grievance and a re-
volver, spoiled it all.

Mayor Carter H. Harrison had spoken, at his best, before
a meeting of mayors on the evening of October 28th. He went
home late, a happy man— his engagement to a young lady who
was to be his third wife had just been announced. He was full
of pride in his city, tired, but aware that it and he had done
well. He was frowned on by many who thought his policies
vicious, but loved by many more. His office was open, always,
to any citizen. This gray-bearded, black-eyed Kentucky
planter, transplanted to a hobbledehoy city, used to drive
around in the foreign sections Sunday mornings and ask after
the health of the children playing on the walks. Murderer
Prendergast did not think of this. He had a persecution mania.
He thought he ought to be Corporation Counsel of Chicago,
He rang the Mayor's doorbell. Harrison was called, and, alone,
met his assassin at the door of the dining-room. There Prender-
gast fired three shots, then fled. The Mayor died within fifteen
minutes.

The World's Pair flags went to half mast. Tragedy marked
its close, except in the Midway Plaisance, where brawling and
lewd crowds, waving whiskey-bottles and signs, rioted until the
small hours. Loving, weeping processions, recalling the wild,
half -morbid mourners at Lincoln's funeral, viewed the Mayor's
bier at the City Hall. And so he was buried, and at the same
time the dream-city on the lake's edge ceased to be.

The grizzled old mayor, "booster" to the end, left a senti-
ment in that last spreadeagle speech that is worth quoting. He
said:

"Genius is but audacity, and the audacity of the 'wild and
woolly West' and of Chicago has chosen a star, and has looked
upward to it, and knows nothing that it cannot accomplish."

CHAPTER IV

HE White City had gone, except for great buildings, buf-
feted by autumn storms, "white elephants55 for which no pur-
chaser could be found.

The "Black City," with its problems and its woes, remained.
Paul Bourget, author of the striking phrases, knew little of
the heart of things. What he saw deserted by the dream was an
industrial Hades, full of smoking chimneys, choked streets,
the movements of mournful mechanical giants. He did not see
the strength of the city with its blackness.

Chicago had passed through the financial panic with a huge
loss of business, but was recovering. It stood in the midst of a
region bursting with food ; and it was broker, "middleman," for
millions of producers. The capital invested in factories was
well over a half-billion, with an output of a quarter million
more. The gross products of the clothing-industry were about
$60,000,000, and of iron and steel more than that. Two-thirds
of the railroads of the country either entered Chicago or
reached it by connections, bringing wealth in the raw, iron,
steel, woods, textiles, to be finished or passed along.

Thus the Summer panic, which closed banks by the score in
many States, struck Chicago and went on, just as the lake often
sends bad storms packing around the horizon. There was a

time, in June, when depositors stood in line before the windows
of the Chicago banks, big and little, clamoring for their money.
But they got it. Two national banks failed; a number of pri-
vate houses succumbed. The others held out — and paid cash.
The Illinois Trust and Savings Bank was kept open until
3 A.M. to take care of depositors. On the worst day of the
run such men as P. D. Armour, Harlow Higinbotham, Mar-
shall Field, and John B. Drake, appeared in the foyer, and
talked to the crowds reassuringly. Armour even personally
guaranteed payment, even gave people, in gold, at his office,
the claims they brought there. Mr. Higinbotham, forsaking his
World's Fair duties for the time being, joined in cheering up
the depositors. He even held a baby for a tired mother !

By Autumn it was clear that the danger was over, and the
city — its coffers still full of money, its stocks of merchandise so
low that it could not be bankrupted by that route — could start
on the upward slope. Its bank-clearings had fallen off only
7.7 per cent, against New York's 22 per cent. loss. Building
had gone on (though reduced), and was increasing again. The
Black City had finished in *93 the handsome Newberry Library,
the buildings so far financed for the University of Chicago, the
Art Institute, the Historical Society structure, and the Acad-
emy of Sciences Building in Lincoln Park. The cornerstone of
the new Public Library was laid. Of the elevated railroads, the
South Side and Lake Street lines had been built, and the
Metropolitan (West Side) begun.

There was room for pride.

And yet the Autumn and Winter brought misery. As the
winds blew colder, the effects of closed factories, stores running
with reduced force, armies of men and women "laid off," were
appallingly shown. It was not alone a Chicago horde of "idle
men and women, haggard and hopeless, and over all the ghostly
shadow of suffering and starvation," as a sympathetic banker
216

put it, but a convention of unemployed from near-by cities,
seeking Chicago as a forlorn hope.

In the City Hall, all through December, the stone corridors
were filled at night with sleepers. The impromptu dormitory
was so overcrowded that the men were forced to sleep with their
heads against the walls, a narrow path being left between the
rows of outstretched feet. In addition, there were slumberers
halfway up the first flight of stairs ; and here and there groups
stood up, trying to doze between reminders from policemen. An
investigator found that the majority of those troubled souls
were unskilled workers not members of unions; he also found
that less than half were foreign-born.

Police stations all over the city sheltered from sixty to one
hundred men each night. In the Harrison Street (Old Armory)
station cells were packed, and in a long ten-foot corridor, in
which maudlin and insane shrieks from prisoners could be
heard, men slept elbow to elbow ; sometimes rats ran over them.
That corridor was "paved with bodies," Jacob Riis found.
There were young boys there too ; in the women's section moth-
ers with babies.

The Winter was terrible for children. Scores were turned
loose on the streets. Babies were thrust upon overcrowded or-
phanages. Evictions ran to hundreds per day — partly because
rents had been raised 20 per cent, during the World's Fair.
Jane Addams, Graham Taylor, and other settlement workers
labored to keep the mothers and children from the poorhouse,
but the tide was too great. The population of the county poor-
house increased by over 400 in a few weeks. In the
Hull House district, 2,000 families received charity-coal
at the rate of half a ton a month. Pawnshops did a 50 per
cent, larger business than in corresponding months of '92.
Loans were estimated by the police at $15,000 a day. An over-
coat brought 35 cents, a silver watch $1,50, a complete "house-
hold outfit," beds, dishes, stove, was sold for $20.

The streets were filled with beggars, some of them stranded
World's Fair peddlers, who now found their Armenian rugs

and glittering fake jewelry impossible of sale. On every corner,
every bridge, hovered blind or armless or legless creatures,
who had profited during the days of plenty, but now whined
for alms and got little. Terrible relics, many of them, of a Sum-
mer of carnival.

Such was the dismal Winter in Chicago in '93. The city was
no worse off than others, in a time when, according to Brad-
street's, the country had 3,000,000 persons out of work. But
Chicago had so many troubles !

However, it was generous. Funds were subscribed by soft-
hearted men of wealth to rent vacant stores in which "soup-
kitchens" were promptly opened. A large empty building near
the lake-front was turned into a soup-house capable of feeding
four thousand a day. Merchants made contributions of food.
Branch stations were opened. The sympathetic P. D. Armour
could be seen watching one of these. In "slum districts,5' mean-
time, such feudal lords as Alderman John Powers distributed
food and clothes to needy persons, who immediately became
loyal constituents. "Hinky Dink" Kenna sheltered hundreds in
his roomy saloons. Around the corner, the Pacific Garden mis-
sion, under the stout Col. George Clarke and his delicate wife,
cared for hundreds. The "free lunch" saved many from starva-
tion. It was declared by a reliable newspaper that during the
worst of the crisis sixty thousand men a day were fed free by
saloonkeepers.

"In Hank North's saloon throughout the Winter he has
given away on an average about thirty-six gallons of soup and
seventy-two loaves of bread every day. In very many cases
those who took advantage of the open-handed hospitality were
too poor to pay a nickel for a glass of beer."

So wrote a sympathetic and fiery British editor, who, in that

December, stood before a gathering of prominent citizens in

evening dress, and shouted, "The only place where the poor

man can exist free now is in. the saloon." He was met with cries

218

of "Untrue!" Undaunted, he retorted, "You are gigantic in
your virtues and gigantic in your vices. I don't know in which
you glory the most, . , . The palace in which your city trans-
acts business is also a shelter for hordes of starving men." A
young lawyer named Joseph David, years later to be a judge
who ordered misdemeanor "cases" to be released from a packed
county jail, stood by the speaker, crying out, "No discharged
criminal can obtain work in this town !" There was a hubbub,
a storm of "Nos," but the words sank in.

The British editor was William T. Stead. He had reached
Chicago in time to see its World's Fair pride almost banished
by its woes. Before a huge audience in Central Music Hall he
had spoken his mind, and though most of his audience had
gone away shocked, the result was the formation of the Civic
Federation, first discussed in the '80s. In the next year he pub-
lished a book, If Christ Came to Chicago, a philippic of four
hundred and sixty pages that spared no millionaire's feelings,
glossed over no single foul fact. Mothers begged their chil-
dren not to read it.

This volume was destined to be a factor in Chicago's post-
WorldVFair awakening. Many persons had been so blinded by
the glory of the exposition that they ignored things which
Stead clearly saw. Such things as these :

"Streets of sin," where whole blocks were given up to broth-
els, and powerful female proprietresses paid the police from
$15 to $100 a week "protection."

Resort property owned by "prominent citizens" ; rents going
into the pockets of descendants of old Puritan families.

Elections bought with money, with whiskey, with free
lunches.

Corruption in the City Hall, in the tax offices, in business.
Ordinances faked up and rammed through the City Council
after a division of swag.

Tax-dodging extraordinary; a total assessed value lower

$19

than twenty years before, despite an increase of a million in
population.

Gambling-syndicates viewed complacently by successive city
administrations.

In general, a city many of whose great capitalists were in-
different to its vices and its woes; a proud city riding for a
fall, and in need of the application of every known device of
sociology or religion to save it.

Mr. Stead's thunderous red-bound tract, sensational in title,
and Billy-Sundayish in much of its preachment, hit Chicago
with a crash. Though stuffed with hearsay testimony, it was
also impregnated with truth. It did not ease a situation full
of strain.

While Coxey's army was marching on Washington, to meet
an absurd and inglorious reception, the line of starving men
in Chicago thinned. The charity-efforts, concentrated in the
Central Relief Association — organized by the Civic Federation
and supervised by the magnanimous T. W. Harvey, founder
of a thriving town — became effective; the outlay of large
funds, contributed chiefly by "middle-class" folks, took the
curse off the Winter. Thousands of men had been saved from
starving by being given two meals a day in return for work on
street-cleaning. But there remained the stark fact that numer-
ous great plants were running short time; payrolls had been
cut ; the unions were in a mood for trouble.

And trouble brooded most ominously over the pretty lit-
tle "model town'5 of Pullman, where the sleeping-car king had
started his housing experiment in the '80s.

It is easy to see why George M. Pullman, a "good fellow" at
heart, and married to a wife whose benevolence reached far and
wide, could not bear the thought of interference with his rule.
The whole mighty industry had sprung from his genius, from
a bright thought years before. Sparing no pains, he had worked
220

out the plan and method of this model town, in which the
skilled workman was to have a neat home, "a town from which
all that is ugly, discordant, and demoralizing is eliminated."
There was an arcade — in which were concentrated stores, a
bank, the postoffice — a theater, a park, a hotel. The 3,500-
acre paradise was beyond the city limits ; it was self-governing
— or rather, it was Pullman-governed. What one critic called
the "feudalism" of the idea went so far as to create a system
by which water sold to the Pullman Company by the city was
resold to the householders. The same with gas. Odder still, the
sewage from homes and shops was conducted to an under-
ground tank, whence it was pumped and piped to the 140-acre
farm of the magnate, and used as fertilizer !

There were cynics, long before the trouble of '94, who said
of the Pullman residents that "they paid rent to the Pullman
Company, they walked on streets owned by the Pullman Com-
pany. . . . They sent their children to Pullman's schools, at-
tended Pullman's church — dared not enter Pullman's hotel
with its private bar." But Pullman did not sell them their grog.
It was a dry town.

Mr. Pullman himself, hurt by criticism of his experiment,
was disposed to point out that to give title to homes would
have admitted "baneful elements"; he gave figures showing
nearly a thousand who did own their homes nevertheless; he
declared the townsmen were "entirely free to buy where they
choose."

At any rate, Mr. Pullman refused to admit that his ideal
had a tarnished side. Nor was he the man to meet the unions
in a yielding mood when in the Spring of '94 reductions in
wages of from 30 to 40 per cent, and reduction of the working-
force by a third, without a corresponding lowering of rents,
brought a determined protest from the shop workmen.

Once before, when the shocking eight-hour-day hydra raised
its head, Mr. Pullman had proved a hard man to beat down.
Now he and his vice-president, T* H. Wickes, declined to sur-
render.

221

In May, with the tulips blooming their best in the dainty
Pullman park, the makers of sleeping-cars laid down their
tools.

Meantime, a new menace had arrived : a tall, gawky man of
thirty-nine, French-Alsatian by descent, gentle-voiced but
burning with sympathy for workers who were paid too little.
The newspaper caricatures made him look like a combination
of Bffl Nye and Mephistopheles. How the "respectable" folk,
the cent-per-centers, hated him, both then and for years to
come ! He was Eugene V. Debs.

When fourteen years of age he had gone to work in the
locomotive-shops at Terre Haute, and then had "fired55 en-
gines. Within ten years he had become Grand Secretary and
Treasurer of the fireman's brotherhood and editor of its paper.
In 1893 he gave up this $4,000-a-year job and organized the
American Railway Union, whereupon his income dropped to
$75 a month, and then to nothing. The "one big union" which
he attempted made its first assault upon the Great Northern
Railroad. A strike was sprung in April, 1894, with the sud-
denness of one of General Sheridan's night-raids, and it was a
success.

When the American Railway Union met in convention in
Chicago on June 12, the Pullman workers had been "out"
for a month. The families of many were in a bad way ; it was
said that workmen owed the company $70,000 for rent ; a Pull-
man preacher was urging, "Act quickly, in the name of God
and humanity.55 The railway men voted $2,000 for relief, and
began to talk boycott, but Debs preferred to arbitrate. A com-
mittee of the American Railway Union called on Vice-President
Wickes.

"Nothing to arbitrate,35 said Mr. Wickes ; and he added, ac-
cording to Debs5 sworn statement later, that he regarded the
strikers "as men on the sidewalk, so far as their relations with
the Pullman Company are concerned.55

A boycott-motion quickly passed the American Railway
Union convention, when that report was brought in. The com-
pany was given four days to treat with the employees. The
ultimatum failed, and on June 26th, Debs sent out two hun-
dred telegrams to his subordinates on Western railroads :

"Boycott against Pullman cars in effect today. By order of
the convention."

The cars were to be cut out from trains, and run onto sid-
ings. It was done on the Illinois Central that same night, and
within the city limits operations came to a standstill.

Now, while thousands of Chicagoans, quite uninvolved in the
struggle, read with amazement and perplexity of the anarchy
of "this fellow Debs," there came on swiftly a terrific tangle in
the great spider-web of railroads. The boycott, denounced as
unlawful, "an interference with the business of the railroad
companies, bound by contract to handle the Pullman cars,"
automatically produced strikes. From Chicago to San Fran-
cisco, the American Railway Union men "cut out" the Pull-
mans, the managers discharged the men, then every trade allied
with the union quit work. Perhaps the thing had gone farther
than Debs meant ; he could not control what he started. Soon
his earnest advice to commit no violence ("Never in my life
have I broken the law or advised others to do so," he testified
when put on trial) began to be disregarded.

There was bound to be violence. All the bitterness, the hood-
lumism, the despair, stored up at the bottom of Chicago's soul
during the awful Winter, boiled over into the railroad yards.
The causes were almost lost to sight. Mr. Pullman's woes fell
with redoubled weight upon the General Managers' Associa-
tion ; some said he deftly tossed them there. These railroad men
were doughty fighters. They determined to run trains. Portly
officials who had not handled a throttle in twenty years climbed
into cabs ; others handled switches. But they found themselves
defeated by howling, hooting, brick-throwing throngs. Here
and there engines Were crippled, capsized on tracks; whole
trains of standing freight-cars were overturned, tower-men

were dragged from switch-towers. On one of those days a loco-
motive was wrecked as a barrier in front of a mail-train crowded
with "through" passengers, and the whole crowd marooned for
hours, famished and complaining loudly. Meanwhile, at the
stockyards supplies of livestock were dwindling. Yards stood
empty. Stock-handlers had struck. A meat famine threatened
the Middle West.

This was in the last days of June. As July came on, Chicago
found itself the flaming center of a war that spread through
all the Western States. No one knew how it would end. The
Federal judges in Chicago granted an injunction against in-
terference with the mails. The Cabinet at Washington held ses-
sion after session, and considered panicky messages from the
West. But, as was characteristic of him, President Cleveland
acted without hesitation. He ordered troops from Port Sheri-
dan, and then more troops from other points. White tents
sprang up overnight on the lake-front. Boys shooting fire-
crackers on that morning of the Fourth of July scurried down-
town to see the soldiers. Increased mobs, freed for the holiday,
hurled missiles and the fighting word "scab" at regulars who
now began to guard the trains in the big terminals. Elsewhere
in the city, the wrecking of property went on, performed (ac-
cording to the general managers) by experts who had left their
jobs, or else (as the American Railway Union said) by irre-
sponsible sympathizers.

And now came on the memorable defiance of the President
by Governor Altgeld, deep student of industrial problems,
frank sympathizer with labor, and maker of hot phrases. The
documents in that dispute between Washington and Spring-
field are worth reading and rereading. They carry an interest-
ing picture of the slender, dyspeptic, bearded governor hurling
at the portly and grim occupant of the White House phrases
such as, "Illinois can take care of itself," and, "You have been
imposed on." Mr. Cleveland replied to the lengthy dispatches

in never more than a hundred words. The Chicagoans read this
exchange with amazement ; clubs passed resolutions upholding
Cleveland. Perhaps less conspicuous were Governor Altgeld's
informal statements, in which he laid the real onus upon At-
torney-General Olney. Cuttingly he remarked : "Illinois never
heard of Olney until Mr. Cleveland introduced him. Illinois had
struggled along for nearly a century without his aid, and by
the grace of God she will endeavor to get along without him
in the future."

President Cleveland meant to fight the thing out. He ordered
more troops. Then he issued a special proclamation to any and
all persons unlawfully obstructing trains or threatening prop-
erty to "return peacefully to their respective abodes before
noon on July 9th." The newspaper headlines read "Martial
Law Declared."

The city of Chicago was beautifully stirred up. Suburban
residents were exasperated by the stoppage or the irregularity
of their trains. It was risky to ride on them. Not infrequently
bold souls stuck to one of those trains — adorned with riflemen
seated on the engine-cab — and had to flatten themselves to the
floor to avoid bullets.

It was "outrageous"; it was "intolerable." Debs was the
Satan of it all ; his men were criminals. Thus opined the "aver-
age man," reader of certain papers. If he read others — such as
the Times, which Carter Harrison had bought and turned over
to his sons — he read that the strikers had some justice on their
side. He read also that the Pullman Company, whose late em-
ployees were by this time approaching starvation, had again
refused to arbitrate. Possibly he read that Hull House had pro-
tested against this, and had thus lost some of its financial sup-
porters.

The drama swept to a climax with fatal shootings in some
of the railroad yards, with night-fires lighting the lonely prai-
ries as scores of freight-cars burned, with a hideous accident
in Grand Boulevard — the explosion of an artillery caisson;
three killed, mangled horses in the street, pieces of metal blown

225

through windows and crashing into drawing-rooms. The cur-
tain of the drama went down on a third act, with Debs and
three colleagues in jail on a charge of conspiracy^ and a con-
tempt-of-court sentence added for good measure, with a threat
of a general strike of all trades (and twenty thousand of them
already out) and promises of civil war.

The fourth act was less exciting. Somehow, the Chicagoans
found their trains running again, the mobs discouraged, the
troops withdrawn. They escaped the general strike. Even the
uncompromising Pullman workers drifted back to the shops.
In that fourth act, which dragged itself out into the following
year, Debs and company were taken through the various legal
steps of punishment. There were enough court proceedings
against them to keep them and their astute attorney, Clarence
Darrow, busy until 1895. The conspiracy-case strangely faded
out; but on the contempt-of -court charge, the American Rail-
way Union men were sentenced to serve six months in the tidy
jail of the tree-shaded town of Woodstock. There they "rested"
comfortably, wrote manifestoes, planned greater battles.

Chicago, occupied now with "ordinary affairs," was not
much interested in the anti-climax.

During the height of anxiety and bedlam, many thousands
of awe-stricken people stood on a Summer night and watched
the grandest of the World's Fair palaces burn. The doomed
Administration Building caught fire from the terminal station;
the mighty Manufactures Building, the homes of Mining, Ag-
riculture, Machinery, and Electricity — all were consumed.
Tremendous billows of flame lighted the South Side and aston-
ished lake-sailors miles away. It was a Goetterdaemmerung.

But also, during those troubled days, there was an event

which symbolized the permanence of a dream. The classic Art

Palace had become the Field Museum. Marshall Field had

given $1,000,000, and had ordered assembled there many won-

226

ders of the Fair, besides other exhibits. In that June of trouble
the museum was opened, with many speeches — but a mere bow
to the crowd from the donor. The first day of public admission,
Mr. Field sat on a bench in the hallway, watching crowds file
through the turnstile. He had found a new kind of happiness.

227

CHAPTER V

1 HE thunder and lightning invoked by Debs having passed
on, Chicago settled down to its real concerns. These were en-
grossing enough.

Fifty thousand people were coming to the city every year —
to live! What did this involve? It put upon a city every one
of whose limbs and sinews — transportation, sewerage, water
delivery, and the like — were already overstrained, a burden
that made everything creak. The food supply was wonderful;
the housing not so good. And then, even if the immediate phys-
ical wants of such a multitude could be adequately met, there,
arose the questions of their health, physical and mental, their
observance of law, their Americanization,

Chicago was used to the spectacle of "immigrant trains.3' At
one time it had seen — so old-timers say — troops of foreigners
led through the streets attached to ropes, each band conducted
by a triumphant agent. It had seen stammering and perspir-
ing Europeans swindled at the gates of railroad stations
by cab-drivers, omnibus men, and deft-fingered crooks. The
sight of groups of beshawled, earringed women, surrounded by
bundles and dirty children, was so common in the waiting-
rooms that sleek suburbanites hardly paused.

Now, in the middle nineties, the crowds were even thicker —
228

and they were growing darker. A profound change was coming
over the character of immigration, throughout the country as
well as in Chicago. The blond peoples of northern and western
Europe were no fewer, but the swarthier, the "more dangerous"
(or so the timid thought them) elements from southern Europe
and from Russia were much more numerous. The years had
come which would increase the population classed as Slavic
from 64,735 (1890 census) to 102,113 (census of 1900) ; the
Latins, chiefly Italians, from 8,748 to 20,992, and other sorts
of European nationalities in somewhat similar ratio. A great
many of the Russians were Jews — not all of them the kind who
became industrial leaders overnight.

Of the annual fifty thousand only a part, of course, were
Europeans. Chicago lured every year, as it always has, thou-
sands of workers from near-by States, and others from the far
East and South. It was still a magnet for youth ambitious or
youth adventurous. Boarding-houses were crammed. The build-
ing of apartment houses went on apace; and fortunately they
were of a better type than the false and hideous "World's Fair
flats," some of which may still be seen within a few miles of
Jackson Park. These American arrivals could take care of
themselves pretty well; not many fell prey to slave-drivers or
to vice-lords or to tenement landlords.

But the swarms of babbling, eager, credulous, and often un-
prepossessing "new Chicagoans" were a phenomenon which
alarmed some citizens, amused others, and in still others — such
as professors and "slum workers" — awakened a spirit of re-
search combined with pity.

The housing curse was not, as in some large cities, an affair
of tall and tottering fire-traps. It was a plague of wooden huts.
In the districts overswept by the Great Fire, and in others
where speculators had slammed cottages together as rapidly
as in the pioneer days, there lay whole streets, incredibly
mournful and dusty, fronted by one-story, or story-and-a-half
"cottages." Not only so, but on many a lot a canny owner
shoved the original house to the rear and built another in front

229

of it. Even three or four houses to a lot were not uncommon.
There was a constant movement, a continual decay, collapses
galore, a daily upheaval among these wooden kennels ; every
once in a while one would come down and a small factory or
store go up. "Almost any day," says a Hull House report in
1895, "in walking through a half-dozen blocks one will see a
frame building, perhaps two or three, being carried away on
rollers."

Conditions of living would seem incredible now, were it not
for the fact that one can still find plenty of vestiges of that
life. One can, indeed, observe many blocks of the very same
houses, on the same streets. It never has paid the landlords to
replace them. Nor, apparently, has it paid the city to discard
these countless remnants of its black past. The city rolls over
its valuable, its wistfully ancient, landmarks ruthlessly. Only
when business wants the property does the foul wooden kennel
get its conge.

Thirty years ago families just disembarked from day-
coaches of the railroads went to live in such houses. Several
families would dispose themselves somehow in a shanty built
for one. Or perhaps they would add themselves to the swarm
occupying a large building, with a deceptively clean front, and
wretched courts or alleys behind.

"Little idea can be given," says the Hull House report, "of
the filthy and rotten tenements, the dingy courts and tumble-
down sheds, the foul stables and dilapidated outhouses, the
broken sewer-pipes, the piles of garbage fairly alive with dis-
eased odors, and of the numbers of children filling every nook,
working and playing in every room, eating and sleeping on
every window-sill, pouring in and out of every door, and seem-
ing literally to pave every scrap of 'yard.5 In one block the
writer numbered over seventy-five children in the open street ;
but the effort proved futile when she tried to keep the count of
little people surging in and out of passageways, and up and
down outside staircases, like a veritable stream of life."

Often, continued this investigator, the lower floors of rear
230

houses were used as stables ; basements were the workrooms of
"sweaters" ; dwarfed, undernourished adults and children could
be seen toiling or playing in rooms full of tubercular menace.
Signs in many languages announced the "omnipresent mid-
wife.55 An area was found in which lived nineteen thousand
people, not one of whom had any bathing facilities whatever —
except the river.

So lived the "under dog,55 hanging on desperately to the
life-rafts that kept him from slipping even lower ; wretched, yet
happy; poor, yet hoping always; and whipped by the keen
Western air into an ambition he had never before felt.

As for the "top dog,55 as for the citizen halfway up toward
riches and leisure, there was plenty to keep him amused and
self-congratulatory. The illusion that his Chicago was a me-
tropolis, a delightful abiding place, a center of the fine arts,
still possessed him. Perhaps there were lovelier paradises, but
he had no wish to enter them. He knew Europe — but it could
not beat Chicago. What about its sun-swept Michigan Ave-
nue, with marble-front houses, tree-shaded yards, the stunning
Auditorium, the carnival of glistening carriages and proud
horses? What about its new Art Institute, its palatial new
Public Library, its green parks? Could they be surpassed?

And there was still fresh and thrilling the memory of the
World's Fair, its like never known. The perfumes of its exotic
villages were not yet gone; there remained in many minds
visions of beauty, and quaint longings, inspired by the bizarre,
the lovely, or the wicked pictures seen; the drumbeats of
naughty savages still echoed, and good churchmen secretly re-
joiced over having seen "La Belle Fatima." Far through the
country spread the vogue of "hootchy-kootchy."

When it came to "culture,55 did not Chicago have it? Its
writers were known in far-away, contemptuous New York.
"Gene55 Field5s last books were appearing. The "Dooley55
sketches of "Pete55 Dunne and the "Artie55 stories of George

Ade were ranking as literature. A reserved, slender young
man named Henry B. Fuller— son of a celebrated pioneer-
had brought out another of his novels, With the Procession —
not exciting, but liked by the critics. The very radical, almost
shocking author of Rose of Dutcher's Cooley, Hamlin Garland,
was attracting the esteem of the great Howells and others. A
man with a delicate blond beard was lecturing at the University
of Chicago, and writing poems ; his name — William Vaughan
Moody — gained renown with his Great Divide. A firm of young
publishers (Stone and Kimball) were daring to bring out with
a Chicago imprint original works by Henry James, Aubrey
Beardsley, and Robert Louis Stevenson. They printed the lat-
ter's Ebb Tide in Chicago in 1895. The Little Room, very ex-
clusive literary club, boosted for everybody who mattered.

All the great actors played engagements, long or short, in
the Chicago of that day— Irving, Terry, Mansfield, Barrymore
and Drew, Jefferson, Goodwin, Julia Marlowe, James H.
Herne. For those who could not rise to the Merchant of Venice
or Henry V, there were Shore Acres, Trilby, the musical com-
edy Rob Roy, and above all Charley's Aunt. Naughty bald-
heads fought for front-row seats to hear and see Lillian Rus-
sell in La Tzigane, which failed in New York but drew $11,000
in a single week in Chicago ! For the mere crass lover of humor,
minstrels like Lew Dockstader and Billy Emerson performed
antics only youngsters such as they could perform.

Movies? The word was unknown. Yet it was in 1895 that
two young men, George K. Spoor and E. H, Ahmet, were
"monkeying" with a new thing, a sort of film that produced
upon a screen flickering shapes resembling human beings in
action. The infant enterprise was sickly, but Spoor kept on.
And in a few years he was able to point to a giant amusement-
activity of which he was certainly a pioneer. His Essanay
(S and A) Studios saw the first film-work of Charlie Chaplin,
Gloria Swanson, Wallace Beery and others,

Art? The Institute (even then caring for fourteen hundred
art students) exhibited the old masters and a few "moderns."

There were also the well-known collections in the homes of
Charles T. Yerkes, James Ellsworth, and Martin Ryerson. Col-
lectors dared to exhibit Manet and Raff aeli, the last-named of
whom visited the city, and was much astonished hy it.

Music? Theodore Thomas, regardless of annual deficits, was
presenting lots of Wagner, no end of Beethoven, and occa-
sionally, some "crazy" things by Russians and Frenchmen.
Famous opera-singers brought from New York performed for
the wild Westerners, who, in small but happy Auditorium audi-
ences, seemed to appreciate Melba, Nordica, and the De Reszke
brothers as much as did New York or Boston. Paderewski, De
Pachmann, Ole Bull, the child wonder Josef Hofmann — they
all played to capacity in old red-plush Central Music Hall.

And then, the "church life" — how the great preachers drew !
It was a thrill to hear John Henry Barrows, Hiram W. Thomas
(awful heretic though he was), Bishop Samuel Fallows, and
the like. Dwight L. Moody was "drawing" five thousand audi-
tors a night. Billy Sunday had quit playing fielder for Anson's
"Colts" and was about to launch his evangelistic career. The
churches, little or big, were on the list of drawing-cards.

Incidentally, there was a church for every two thousand in-
habitants. This was somewhat offset by the fact that there was
a saloon for every two hundred.

The saloon ! A more and more "burning question,**
At this time there hung in thousands of homes a portrait of
a lady with severe eye-glasses but gentle expression, whose
name stood everywhere for the women's temperance movement.
She lived in an inconspicuous Evanston dwelling, since become
a kind of shrine. No greater celebrity had any Chicagoan of
the '90s than Frances E. Willard. As head of the W.C.T.IL
she had in twenty years attracted thousands of members, and
had become a nation-wide "proselyter," To the original society
she added the Home Protective Association. Before her death

233

in 1898 she had visited, it is said, every city in the United
States of 10,000 or more inhabitants. She traveled 30,000 miles

in one year.

Like many another builder, Miss Willard found her un-
solved problem in an actual building. She and her associates
conceived the idea of a downtown city "monument"— the
Temple. It was built, and it was beautiful, but it involved debt.
The Temple bonds became a subject for wise financiers to
knit their brows over. They brought sleepless nights to the
heroic lady. After she died, the W.C.T.U. speedily voted to
give up the building. The "monument" passed to other hands,
and today its very stones are gone,

A year after Miss Willard, Mr. Moody was taken from the
turbulent Chicago scene. Like her, he had been shocked by^its
sins into the impulse to save it. He had begun much earlier.
Indeed, it was near the middle of the nineteenth century that
Mr. Moody, having come to Chicago to sell shoes, had begun
mission work in a small way. He "sold" religion even more
effectively than shoes. (His great friend John V. Farwell once
called him "the Sunday-school drummer.") When he first
taught poor children, he used to canvas a tough district for
ragged youngsters, wash and clothe them, and hurry them to
the mission house. That was the sort of man he was.

Although in his later years he was summoned to many coun-
tries to save souls, though he had triumphs together with
Sankey, in England and elsewhere, he acknowledged Chicago
as home. He was happiest, perhaps, addressing the weeping
crowds in his North Side tabernacle, or in appealing to audi-
ences that filled the high-arched Auditorium. He was a World's
Fair figure — not so much at the congresses as in his efforts
to save the wicked who had flocked to the exposition.

Moody made fortunes from hymn-books and other royalties ;
gave the fortunes away. As late as the '90s he could be seen,
going from seat to seat in street-cars or perhaps stopping a
pedestrian, to inquire: "Are you a Christian?" The blackness

of Chicago, many times, must have driven him to half -despair-
ing prayer.

Certainly, despite the delight of life, despite reform, God
was not always in the Chicago heaven of the middle nineties.
A good many people suspected this; a few were sure of it.
The few who were burning to see Chicago not only well-gov-
erned but impeccably moral, grouped themselves in the Civic
Federation, "a voluntary association of citizens for the mutual
counsel, support and combined action of all the forces for
good." And these forces looked up to none other than Lyman
J. Gage, the banker, for final decisions.

If there were any who thought that, because of being a
banker, Mr. Gage was too commercial to run a Civic Federa-
tion, they were wrong. He had lived in Chicago many years,
had seen its social convulsions, and was a thoughtful student.
Shortly after the anarchist outbreak of 5S6 he had headed a
forum consisting of twenty-four members, including eight per-
sons considered frightfully radical, and one who was even
worse, perhaps a Henry Georgeite. Regardless of financiers
who grumbled in the clubs, "What's Gage up to now?5' he
brought the forum to his house, where everybody had his say
about the solution of the capital-labor problem and kindred
matters. The house-forum led to public meetings, of which Mr.
Gage wrote later, "I am sorry to say that they were attended
but feebly by the well-to-do people.55 And he added a comment
on social levels : " ^Higher classes' is not the best term ; 'self-
satisfied5 is nearer.55

It was that kind of banker, author of a phrase, "Despair lies
in the deep-seated prejudices of both sides of society," who
headed the Civic Federation, with its central council of one
hundred and its branches in all the city?s thirty-four wards.
It had six departments, philanthropic, industrial, municipal,
educational, moral, and political, and on one or the other of
these committees appeared such names as Marshall Field,

235

Harlow Higinbotham, Franklin MacVeagh, Cyrus McCormick,
Jr., (son of the great Cyrus) as well as the social scientists
like Jane Addams, Graham Taylor, Albion W. Small,^and
Sarah Hackett Stevenson, and religious leaders like Emil G.
Hirsch and 0. P. Gifford. The first vice-president was the
Four Hundred's leader, Mrs. Potter Palmer; the second vice-
president a union-labor official, J. J. McGrath,

The Civic Federation feared no one, and tackled nearly
everything. It helped put through the city's first civil-service
law, which languished until the lawyer Adolf Kraus got behind
it and made it work. It organized the relief -work in the dark
Winter of 1 893-1894 ; it fought the twin evils of dirty streets
and grafting garbage-contractors ; it startled the city, in the
fall of '94, by an ax-and-crowbar assault on gambling.

Now gambling in Chicago had for years been renowned;
Cripple Creek was little better known as a place in which
to "blow money." "In the very shadow of the City Hall,"
flourished the richly decorated and far f rqm f ur^^saions of
such grandees as Harry Varnell, the JSwi^^Dr^iers, and
Ed Wagner and Curt Gunn. The House of David roared
unchecked, under the clever management o£ Billy Fagan. (He
was so clever as to have one room with a sign over it, "The
Rev. Mr. , Prayer Meeting and Gospel Services," to de-
lude the police — though they had no idea of raiding it, any-
how.) Varnell's ran day and night, with a force of twenty-four
faro^feglers, twelve croupiers, and sixty other employees. His
payroll ~was over $3,000 a week, and His "protection" probably
cost him twice that.

All this was the fruit of years of "wide-open town,55 encour-
aged during the '80s, or even earlier, by the political power of
that full-blooded, "divil-may-care" and shrewd character,
"Mike" MacDonald. It is Chicago legend that he coined the
phrase, "A sucker is born every minute'.*' For years he was in
#36

and out of Chicago's enterprise as well as its scandals. He grew
rich on downtown real estate; he once owned a daily news-
paper— The Globe. He helped build the "Lake Street L." But
he was remembered usually as a gambler, owner of the "pal-
ace," "The Store." By 1895 MacDonald was "about through";
others took his place.

Under a ministerial chairman of a sub-committee the "forces
for good" decided to extirpate gambling for all time. The
mayor, John P. Hopkins, was backed into a corner, and a
reluctant promise was obtained from him; but since he held
that gambling under control of the police was less vicious than
when hidden in secret and "lawless" places, the promise
amounted to little. The houses closed for a time, but reopened.
The Mayor declared that "certain business men" had asked
him to permit the reopening.

The clergyman-crusader, the Rev. W. G. Clarke, then hired
an army of hardy special constables under a chieftain named
Matt Pinkerton. In the bustling noon-hour of a September
day a detachment crept up the stairway of Varnell's place,
brushed by the negro watchman, and burst open the door.
Hundreds of players (for the wheels spun merrily then in day-
light hours) looked up amazed. A manager confronted the
raiders.

"By what authority — ," he began.

"The authority of the Civic Federation !" shouted Pinkerton.

Watchers, gunmen, and manager hurled themselves upon the
attacking force. There was a scuffle. Brass knuckles fell. The
invaders retreated, only to return shortly with reinforcements,
axes, sledge-hammers, and crowbars. With these they battered
down the heavy oak door, with its iron trimmings, which had
been slammed behind them. They climbed over a barricade of
tables and chairs, and were laying hands on the roulette-
wheels when they found themselves belabored by sling-shots.
They drew revolvers, but did not shoot . . . those mild raiders
of the '90s. Meantime an Evanston justice of the peace, who
had been waiting on the street below, produced warrants for

237

Pinkerton and others. Before a huge crowd, filling curbs and
windows, the constables were marched off to court.

Next, the reformers ordered raids on J. Condon's gambling-
house, also in the heart of the business district. Axes this time
were concealed under mackintoshes; the doors were beaten
down. Tables and wheels were carted away, but a writ of
replevin had already been obtained, and the constables were
once more defeated. The House of David was the next objec-
tive. It was entered by 7orty men, for whom the wily Fagan
himself opened the door into his domain with its "rich hang-
ings and classic paintings." After a search, the roulette-wheels
were found concealed under a pile of old battle-flags, and were
carried to the street, while an enormous crowd hooted. Before
carrying them out, the constables accepted a cooling drink
from the amiable Fagan. They all bustled to the court of
Judge Theodore Brentano.

"We have a replevin writ," pleaded the negro attorney for
the gamblers.

"From whom?" scowled the gentleman who was to become
minister to Hungary.

"From the coroner."

His Honor banged the desk.

"I'll hold him for contempt," he declared, and adjourned
court before another move could be made. So the Pinkerton
troops carried the valuable wheels into the basement and burned
them merrily in the Court-House furnace.

The crusade would not have been complete without a mass-
meeting, such as citizens of the '90s rejoiced in. It was held
in Central Music Hall. Of course, Mr. Gage presided. Before
the crowd filling pit and gallery Harry Rubens, Mayor Hop-
kins* corporation counsel, was called on for a defense of the
administration and of the "buck-passing" between Mayor and
Chief of Police.

238

"Mr. Chairman," he cried, amid hisses and yells, "no ad-
ministration of the city of Chicago has ever been as totally
independent of and as radically inimical to the criminal
classes."

Heated by the storms of hisses, Mr. Rubens went on :

"Inimical not only to the ordinary criminal classes who
commit the everyday offenses of shop-lifting and gambling,
but to the infinitely more dangerous criminals who will occupy
a front pew in a fashionable church on Sunday and on Monday
attempt to secure a corrupt franchise ordinance by bribery."

He became still more bitter. He referred to princely man-
sions, stylish landaus, cuttle-fish, tax-fixing, railroad kings,
deaths at grade-crossings, etc., all amid hisses and cries of,
"Will you answer a question?"

There was more than a hint in all this of things which partly
explained Chicago's turbulence of that day; a suggestion of
the great warfare between corporations and the people. Indeed,
there must have come to the minds of many in the audience the
symbol expressed in the single word, which was like a challenge
to battle:

"Yerkes,"

239

CHAPTER VI

OR years the name of Yerkes had been pronounced with
suspicion, with hatred, or with that facetious tolerance which
has saved Chicagoans so much strain and concealed so many
skeletons.

For years Yerkes had faced down financial enmities, news-
paper editorials, whisperings, allusions to his convict past,
and the slanting looks of a society that half desired to ostracize
him. He took attacks, says an inspired biographer, "in a calm
good-natured sort of way, allowing nothing to interfere with
his progress." In 1896 he was a ruddy, bold, white-moustached
man on the verge of sixty, this traction-king of Chicago. His
convict past lay a long way back in the '70s, the time of money
panic. It amounted to nothing more than a brief term in a
Pennsylvania prison, resulting from his failure, while a Phila-
delphia banker, to produce city securities which he held on
deposit. This fall from grace could not compare with the crimes
of which he was accused in Chicago, but it sounded louder
on the drums of newspaperdom. He was the arch-this and
arch-that. Perhaps he smiled. But in the late ?90s his Chicago
career was ending.

It could not be said that Mr. Yerkes and his associates, such
as D. EL Louderback, had failed to develop the carlines. They
had not extended them to meet all the needs of the riding
public ; the people increased faster than the cars, year by year.
But the traction-men had laid down hundreds of miles of new
tracks on the north and west lines, which they controlled. In
the late '80s they had introduced, on a few main lines, the
cable-trains; and as early as 1895 the Yerkes group had begun
to introduce trolley-systems. Characteristically, they proceeded
in bland disregard of property-owners, who howled about the
sudden forest of trolley-poles, some of which were planted
overnight. They ignored protests against the "deadly trolley ,"
the perils inherent in speed, the live-wire peril — even calm
engineers discounted the dangers. No matter who roared, the
Yerkes crowd continued to replace the old horsecars, at the
same time that their elevated-railroad rivals were, amid equal
clamor, beginning to encircle the heart of Chicago with a
strangling collar of rails on stilts — the Union Loop, both
bane and blessing of downtown business.

What the lay citizen understood very ill, though it was
clear to financiers and newspaper editors, was that while
"giving to Chicago the benefits of up-to-date transportation,"
Yerkes et al. were growing rich from dubious franchises and
watered stock. It is a very tangled story. Let it go with the
note that, having acquired the North Chicago Railway in 1886
and the West Chicago Railway in 1887, Yerkes had helped
himself to city ordinances for years with little compensation
to pay. The franchises increased in value many-fold and on the
stock market Yerkes had done so well that his "interests," in
some cases, paid glittering dividends. The lines were capital-
ized for millions more than they were worth. A scientific report
issued in 1900 — after Mr. Yerkes had escaped to a friendly
London to build tubes— stated that of the $118,000,000 se-

curities of the companies in the late '90s at least $72,000,000
worth were "water."

Mr. Yerkes* relations with the City Council were very com-
fortable. When he needed the rights to a street, or a couple
of tunnels under the river, he pressed a button. His commis-
sioner of aldermanic relations came running. Soon there floated
through the dark corridors of the City HaU word of something
good on the griddle. There would then be a meeting of two or
three go-betweens in a hotel or a saloon back-parlor. In due
time twenty or thirty aldermen would blossom out with new
race-horses or deeds to nice property.

It was the "system." Mr. Yerkes was not alone in taking
advantage of it. The city owned all the streets and alleys, and
could sell them wholesale or retail. Gas-companies seeking to
lay mains, railroads needing switch-tracks, shopped for them
in that smoke-filled Bon Marche, the City Hall. The aldermen
received salaries that were nominal. Their jobs, said "muck-
rakers," were worth $15,000 to $20,000 a year. Before 1895,
in the days of Mayors Cregier, Harrison, Swift, and Hopkins,
it was reported that the shopper for an important franchise
had to pay $25,000 each to an inner circle of aldermen, and
$8,000 each to members of a small periphery. An official who
managed things received, in at least one instance, $100,000
in cash and $111,000 in property. But later on there was an
appalling slump in prices, and aldermen were known to take
as little as $300 for a vote — exacting 25 per cent, more for
helping pass a measure over a veto.

To make all this buccaneering the more gaudy, ordinances
were framed on behalf of companies which did not exist, or
were not expected to function. Aldermen helped organize them.
In dear old '94, for example, the boys wrote out a gas-com-
pany ordinance giving the streets to a ghost called the Uni-
versal Gas Company, which was to use a huge network of
streets and pay the city a pittance. The ordinance was passed,
vetoed by Mayor Hopkins, and passed over his veto. Soon the
clever group of aldermen, half saloon-keepers and half "re-

spected citizens," sold the "rights" to the Mutual Gas Com-
pany for $175,000, and the ghost was laid. Another famous
measure, whose history would run into pages, was the Ogden
gas-ordinance, which involved ninety-cent gas, a fifty-year
franchise, and low compensation as against another proposal
offering eighty-cent gas. It went through on the fly, but in
later, comparatively reformed days, it proved ineffective, and
a pretty plan to sell it for $6,000,000 fell through. The Ogden-
gas ghost refused to be laid for years. It haunted a genial boss
named Roger Sullivan in many a campaign.

Yes, the aldermen were nearly as clever as the magnates.
The system worked. Mr. Yerkes must have used it almost as
a matter of course, just as his men hired court bailiffs to hand
greenbacks to jurors in personal-accident damage-suits. After
Mr. Yerkes had retired to London he reviewed his Chicago
career to a journalist (Edward Price Bell) who had helped
wreck that career; and his justification was^^I, had to do it."

The wonder is that, with franchise-shopping s6 ^costly, Mr.
Yerkes could afford his "mansion," his art gallery, Bis,^$l,000
carriage, his $1,700 piano, his gift of an electric fountain to
Lincoln Park, and his magnificent present to the University of
Chicago for what is still the largest ref racting-telescope in the
world. Thousands visit the dignified observatory at Williams
Bay, Wisconsin, where Prof. E. B. Frost presides; gaze
through the great tube that succeeded the old "Dearborn tele-
scope," and wonder who Mr. Yerkes was.

Now in the late months of 1895, the Civic Federation, con-
science of the city, determined to cleanse such part of the
Augean stables as occupied the soot-stained City Hall. The
Federation had followed its gambling-expose of September,
1894, by forcing the prosecution of ballot-manipulators at
the November county election and gaining twenty-one convic-
tions, including one sentence to the penitentiary. By another

year the Federation felt itself strong enough to assail the alder-
manic grafters, numbering fifty-seven out of the sixty-eight !

But where was the man hardy enough to lead the assault?
He was not among the inner councillors of the Federation.
Indeed, it became clear that the political action group of that
body could not cope with the conditions; there must be a
separate organization. After a Winter of debate — following
a very enjoyable mass-meeting — this new offshoot of the
Federation was established and dubbed the Municipal Voters
League. Its birthdate was February 13, 1896. Lyman Gage
and his advisers had hunted frantically for a president to run
their new league. Weeks were slipping by. Word of the reform-
venture had got about, and city councilmen such as Johnny
Powers, Little Mike Ryan, Foxy Ed Cullerton, and Bath-
House John Coughlin were much amused. Things did not look
propitious for political reform. One William Lorimer, a heavy
blond person, lately a street-car conductor, constable, and
water-office boss, had got himself elected to Congress, and was,
amazingly, in command of Cook County Republicanism. Newly
come to Democratic power was the diminutive Hinky Dink
Kenna, former bootblack, seller of "red-hots" at the races —
where he received his soubriquet because of his small stature —
and now prosperous saloon-keeper. He and Jawn (nicknamed
"Bath-House" because he was once a rubber in a Turkish
bath) were to dominate the First Ward for years.

Against the ruthless, clever, and well-intrenched aldermanic
gang, who could prevail? Only eight years before, some mem-
bers of the county board had "robbed the public treasury" of
about $500,000 through crooked contracts on public work.
Eleven were convicted, and a newspaper had crowed, "Official
corruption cannot forever escape punishment in Cook County."
But how about it in 1896?

Mr. Gage worried on. And then, sitting in a meeting one

day, he heard a few passionate words fall from the lips of a

chunky, blunt, dark-eyed member with a black goatee. His

name was George E. Cole. He was a stationer. He had become

24*4*

president of a Federation branch; the leaders knew little else
about him. They could not dream that, in a few months, a news-
paper would refer to him as a "political buzz-saw and thrash-
ing-machine . . . hard as a billiard-ball . . . about as big as
Napoleon . . . not an office he would accept on a silver
platter."

Mr. Cole, drummer-boy in the Civil War and resident of
Chicago since 1868, was not yet forty years of age when asked
to head the M.V.L. They told him frankly he was a kind of
last resort.

"If that's the case, I'll serve," he said with a characteristic
chuckle.

He thought a moment.

"I make these conditions," he said, stroking his goatee.
"First, I must be allowed to tell the brutal facts ; call a spade
a spade, y'know. Second, I must pick, my own secretary. And
third — third, I do not want to know who contributes money
for this cause."

"Granted," replied the board instantly.

"Do you suppose . . . Can I have as much as $10,000?"

They thought he could.

"Then let's be at it," said the new champion, rising to his
full height — of about five feet.

The election was now a matter of counting days. Mr. Cole,
having selected a directorate of seven members, sent for a
slender, sharp-eyed young man named Hoyt King, who had
been assistant secretary to former Police Chief Major Robert
McLaughry, and made him the league's secretary. They hired
a tiny office and furnished it with a couple of tables and a set
of cheap chairs. On these sat the eminent directors, consisting
of men like Edmund Burritt Smith, the scholarly lawyer, R.
R. Donnelley, famous printer, and the civic-minded broker
James L. Houghteling, who was treasurer. Judge Murray F.
Tuley, grand old man of the bench, dropped in to give un-
official advice.

There was a minimum of useless talk. Mr. Cole's method was

£45

to listen briefly, then break out, "But what're we going to
do about it?" He steamed ahead like a tug churning the water.
Spades were spades. The League documents appeared with the
motto on the first page,

— "a hundred years ago
If men were knaves, why, people called them so."

From the little office issued printed leaflets, placards, letters.
They were sparing of sirocco adjectives. Instead, they coolly
recited the records of the aldermanic "gray wolves,5' as the
League later called them. A cool and wily pillar of the stone-
business, Republican leader of the Council, none other than
the late Martin B. Madden, was hit between the eyes. Mr. Cole
had known and disapproved of him in South Side ward-
politics. The saloon-fixers were dealt with quite as adequately.

And Yerkes, — at last the secret opinion of him was put in
words; in three words exactly:

"Yerkes the Boodler."

There it was in good-sized type, on every fence and vacant
building that could be hired.

Only one signature appeared on any of the placards or
dodgers ; the signature, "Municipal Voters League, George E.
Cole, President."

In the political saloons, on street-cars, in the polished offices
of Mr. Yerkes, people were asking, "Who is this fellow Cole?"

The gray wolves took their medicine sometimes with bared
teeth, oftener with good humor. They had quaint ideas of what
constituted insult.

Hoyt King relates that one day, several years after the
League started, the tall, pompadoured Bath-House John and
the pale slight Hinky Dink appeared before Mr. Cole's desk.
The League president rose to his full height, expecting trouble.

"Mr. Cole,55 said Coughlin, "you've done me wrong. You've
libeled me."

"In what way?" bristled Mr. Cole.

"You said I was born in Waukegan, instead of Chicago.5*
246

The League officials laughingly promised a correction, but
Coughlin did not laugh. All the boodle-charges had rolled off
his back. To have Waukegan called his birthplace hit him hard.

The astonishing thing was that Chicago woke up. Perhaps
there had been preparing for a long time a receptivity to Mr.
Cole's kind of plain truths. Yet there was also involved the
stone wall of gang-politics built so ably under a string of
mayors, and supported by concessions to foreign elements
that were willing to give up clean government in exchange for
"freedom." The earthworks of the franchise-sellers were high
and solid ; yet when it came to nominations for the aldermanic
election, Cole's attack made a breach. Fourteen thieves dropped
out of the running before they started.

Meantime, the grafters and their agents had identified Mr.
Cole. "The little fellow with the goatee, that's him." They
knew Ms home address, too* Trying him out with cajolery,
they made no impression. Soon there came to Mrs. Cole a mys-
terious threat that her child was to be kidnaped. She was
game, like her husband. He must keep on with his work. Noth-
ing untoward happened. On the street Cole got black looks,
but no brass knuckles. At his stationery-store there were evi-
dences of a more subtle counter-attack. It developed that cer-
tain business men were withdrawing their orders for stationery.

"Can't help it," said the president of George E. Cole and
Company.

A minister wrote him a suave letter. The minister could not
understand why his constituent, a leading alderman, was being
called a knave. This alderman, said the pastor, had only
worked for the "best interest of his ward."

"Look at his record," replied Mr. Cole, with his usual brev-
ity. The preacher was silenced.

Alderman Powers sought out his fiery little antagonist.

"Why don't you be a good fellow and give the boys a

chance?" he coaxed. No good. The League built up its forces,
held meetings, inspired messages from the pulpit, sent out its
cool, precise, and deadly statements.

The gang-aldermen, hitherto immune, fought hard. Powers
flooded his melting-pot 19th Ward with ten-dollar bills. Good
Italians were angry because he had said he could buy them for
a song ; but since he had one out of every five voters on the city
payroll (Hull House figures), he was still invulnerable. An-
other of the ring named John Colvin— the name has passed
quite into oblivion — walked into saloons, bought drinks for all
comers, sneered at the reformers who had "done nothing to help
the workingman." Still another of the "gray wolves," one
O'Connor, had the happy thought to illuminate streets of his
ward with electric light. He pointed with pride to his improve-
ment, but the reformers pointed to the cost — $575 for each
light-pole. Blind Billy Kent, one of the most curious characters
of the time, Mike Mclnerney, hejrhpjsaW^
was healthjjfor babies, John Brennan of the super-tough 18th
W^-d^they all worked every device in their power.

Powers and many of the other gangsters saved themselves.
But in several wards men such as John Maynard Harlan —
sledge-hammer orator who was to lead two mayoralty forlorn
hopes — and Charles F. Gunther, the "candy-man," beat the
crooks by slim majorities. Roger Sullivan, who was looming in
Democracy as Lorimer was in Republicanism, "put over" a
decent person named Maypole. Altogether, twenty men whom
the League considered good citizens entered the Council; a
dozen of the worst coyotes were eliminated. Mighty victory
for a little man with a goatee !

The struggle for a clean Council went on with ups and downs
for several years. In that first year the League crushed the solid
two-thirds majority able to pass almost anything over the veto
of Mayor Swift. In the next, the reform element was still

stronger. Martin Madden passed out of the picture about this
time to become an able Congressman.

Meanwhile, Mr. Yerkes, having drawn the useful Lorimer
into alliance, had moved upon the Legislature at Springfield,
where the prospects looked better than in Chicago. He and his
attorneys contrived measures granting fifty-year franchises
to traction-lines, and an obliging Senator named Humphrey
introduced them.

Chicago rose in wrath. Delegations descended upon Spring-
field, and by an amazing outlay of oratory, backed by fierce
newspaper editorials, succeeded (May, 1897) in downing the
Humphrey bills. But Mr. Yerkes, himself thoroughly aroused,
returned instantly to the battlefield. Within a few days he
caused to be framed and introduced — this time by Charles
Allen, of Hoopeston — a new fifty-year-franchise bill.

The fight grew fiercer. John Harlan, son of the United
States Chief Justice, raged back and forth between Chicago
and Springfield. In halls on all sides of the city people spoke
bitterly; and — yes! — there was a mass-meeting in Central
Music Hall.

Thomas B. Bryan, Chicago stalwart and World's Pair di-
rector, presided. At one point he cried out:

"If you were a jury, what would you do with Yerkes ?"

"Hang him!" roared the crowd.

However, with the aid of Lorimer, and, according to Harlan,
by lavish use of money, the Allen bill was passed ; passed amid
violent scenes, when chairs were broken and desks dented. Gov.
Tanner signed the bill. A newspaper cartoon pictured him at
his desk, with a sign on the wall "What's Home Without
C. T. Yerkes?"

Full soon, a fifty-year-franchise ordinance, based on the
Allen law, reached the Chicago Council. Two years before it
might have slid through on rollers and a veto would have
been overridden. But the solid gang-majority was no longer
operating in the chamber with the ornaments of Stars and
Stripes and spittoons.

249

Further, there sat in the chair of presiding officer a new
Carter Harrison, black-moustached son of the hero of the white
horse and slouch hat. Harrison was with the new dispensation ;
in most matters, an ally of the League. He was impregnated
with the political tradition of his dynasty, including opposi-
tion to wealthy monopolists. "Man of the people," his policy.
More, it could be seen that an era of franchise-selling, of
"wild West" town, of "anything goes," had (possibly) closed,
and a Chicago more modern, more scientific, was (perhaps)
emerging. He wielded a tough gavel against the gang. The
fifty-year-franchise measure was buried. A Harrison veto hung
heavily not only over that outrage, but over many another
invention of street-car barons, electric-monopolists, gas-
grafters. The mayor's promise to "eat my fedora hat" rather
than permit a Yerkes victory became a long-lived Chicago epi-
gram. There was a bluff honesty ai>out this mayor that de-
pressed the boodlers.

Even non-partisan organization of Council committees won
under Harrison, but not until his second term. And it was 1900
before the League could congratulate itself on having defi-
nitely sent the gang to the rear.

An editorial in that year became very optimistic. The City
Council was now "the best legislative body in any large city."
Four years from the time when Cole, the stationer, had taken
off his coat, Chicago had put Yerkes in his place, had set on
foot really scientific studies of the carlines, and was headed
toward the Mueller municipal-ownership law of 1903.

The League brought into public life many figures — John
F. Smulski, banker, Milton Foreman, general in the World
War ; William E. Dever, afterward mayor, Robert R. McCor-
mick, who became an able president of the Sanitary District,
and others. But politics had to thrust into all this one of its
piercing sarcasms.
250

The League had won. In 1900 it was a clear victor. Yet in
that Spring, casting about for a Republican nominee in the
Second Ward to defeat an undesirable candidate, the leaders
(successors of the weary Cole) listened to recommendations
on behalf of a young man of wealth, son of a stout-minded
Chicago citizen, an athlete. They were told that he could do
no harm. "The worst you can say of him is that he's stupid,55
they were advised.

This unknown athlete, known as football player and yachts-
man, was about thirty years old, handsome and eager. He sub-
scribed to the League's platform, and in the election he de-
feated Candy-Man Gunther. Later, he voted against midnight
closing of saloons, but was forgiven, as he had a reputation
for efficiency.

This strange political child of reform was William Hale
Thompson.

251

CHAPTER VII

JL HE drive during the late '90s to make government, and
people too, law-abiding and "clean5* met with some applause.
It was scorned, however, by the merry Chicagoan whose daily
path lay between Billy Boyle's chop-house or SchlogPs res-
taurant and the somewhat subdued gambling-parlors.

There were many esteemed citizens, too, men of affairs and
good habits (if the "morning nip" be allowed) who mourned
the evident decay of an epoch. To them, the symptoms of a
repressive age meant that a Chicago they loved — loud, frank,
and unsystematic — was to be banished3 and a period of smooth-
ing down and slicking up was at hand. They took out their
dismay in jeering at reformers, in taunting them with "play-
ing to the church crowd,55 in complaining of "all this so-called
progress."

They could not stop anything. The city rolled on over land-
marks. Its new skyscrapers banished well-loved haunts, even
as new moralities displaced the old.

The veteran Chicagoan, strolling Michigan Avenue today
under the stupendous parapets of the Straus Building or the
252

Gas Building, thrills at all this majesty, but sighs still for the
perspective that included the dear old Leland Hotel, kept with
personal assiduity by mine host Warren Leland, and the
Richelieu, the incomparably European place run so lovingly
by "Cardinal" Bemis. At the Richelieu, this rambling veteran
will tell you, a dinner comprising twenty dishes could be had
for a dollar; and a gala meal would be served on imported
plates worth $1,000 a dozen (believe it or not) ! So valuable
was this dinner-service that Mrs. Bemis always washed it her-
self.

"The lake-front!" the veteran will exclaim* "Maybe this
Chicago Plan is all they say it is ; but I liked the lake-front
when they played professional ball there, and the old exposition
building was there, and there wasn't no Art Institute."

And then he will remind you of the old American-plan
hotel, which about this time began to yield to new systems ; of
the Tremont House, with its lobby full of politicians, and its
high ceilings and bedchambers (later occupied by class-rooms
or offices of some of Northwestern University's professional
schools) ; of the Old Sherman House (No. 2), watched over
by J. Irving Pearce, pulling his long whiskers.

He will go on until you stop him, all about Billy Boyle's,
about Chapin and Gore's, Quincy No. 9, the Boston Oyster
House, Kinsley's, and other establishments, free and easy or
not, where things were so cheap, and the company so artless,
after all. Besides, what about a fifteen-cent lunch, filling
enough, served by one of Kohlsaat's busy negroes?

By no means does the old-timer (though tender with memo-
ries of stout old Kinsley and his "Dundrearies") forget Mc-
Garry's saloon, whose bar was thronged night after night by
citizens of real prominence and excellent domestic habits; by
politicians, plungers, and wits — by Pete Dunne, who so often
listened to the repartee of McGarry and his customers, and who
set it down in the universally read Mr. Dooley.

And the veteran is likely to say :

"I don't know as anything was gained by all those pleasures

253

passing out. I don't know, f r instance, as the town really got
anywhere by the fight on gambling. Oh, well, I suppose it
wasn't so good to have over a hundred saloons in two down-
town blocks, and gambling so wide-open you could hear the
wheels whirr from the streets. But— I don't know . . ."

And he will tell you, grinning, of Steve Rowan, the Fal-
staffian policeman whose beat took in those two blocks, and who
never, with all the "goings-on," arrested a single green-baize
devotee. . . . He will even tell how Steve, sauntering on Clark
Street one Summer night, when through open windows the^click
of poker-chips came clear, was stopped by a "reformer."

"Don't you know there's gambling on your beat, ^officer?"

"Gambling?" returned Rowan politely, raising his bushy
eyebrows- "Certainly, sir, I'll look into it."

And on he strolled, humming.

Listen to the "vet" as he laments the passing of the Wash-
ington Park race-track. Oh, Derby day!

It was a beautiful park, the only one within the city proper
that weathered, until 1905, the frowns of the anti-gambling
tribunals. Flat buildings largely cover the area now,

"How many times," murmurs the old-timer, "I've seen the
tally-ho parties jingle down the boulevard to the track, the
ladies with sunshades, picture hats, swell lace costumes. . . .
Hampers of wine under the seats. . . . Old Capter Harrison
never would stop all that, you bet. By the time young Carter
came in, what you call public sentiment had shifted. Young
Carter had to give an order to stop the bookies ; I remember
the jokes when he did it. Feller named — I just barely remember
— John Hill stirred it up. He was a blue-law feller. You know
(but you wouldn't recall), his house out south was blown up by
a bomb, and there were people who said he did it himself/*

(Thirty years later the State's attorney of Cook County
cited this early "mysterious bomb" in connection with explo-
254

sions that damaged the houses of two of his political opponents.
If Hill did it himself, why not these men, asked he.)

Our veteran drifts to the magnificent chance-taker Bet-a-
Million Gates — in the business world, John W., eminent steel-
man and Wall Street figure. He recalls that, while still a star
salesman, Gates would frequent eagerly the public rooms of
such gambling-lords as Fagan and Curt Gunn; but after he
became a high official he "got dignified.55 Still, his vast business
ventures did not exhaust his love of a thrill. Curt Gunn, quiet,
commonplace to look at, a sort of Cyrano in pepper-and-salt,
fixed up secluded but satisfying games for his friend Gates.
"Heavy55 bridge-whist games, were some of them.

"Gates was one of the first bridge sharks," says the "remi-
niscer." "No, I don5t mean straight whist — bridge. A game
only for rich gents then. And I remember they used to play
in an office in the Rookery Building, sometimes starting on a
Saturday night, and keepin5 on until Monday. Send out for
their meals. Mebbe $100,000 would change hands.

"Oh, they had one game that was a good one ! The — lemme
see, they called it the American Whist Association — was in
town, and somehow an argument started over whether ama-
teurs or professionals was the better players. And Gunn said
he'd settle it. So he got another professional besides himself,
and Gates got another amateur; and they played a $5,000-a-
side match-game. The amateurs won !"

From this the old-timer passes easily to Joe Leiter and his
disastrous wheat-corner of 1897-1898.

"Six-footer, Joe was — and is, of course. He was a nice young
feller to meet. He was in his twenties when he went out to beat
Armour and other big guys ; didu5t know what to do with all
his money, I suppose. Anyway, he lost — what was it? — some-
where near six million."

The old-timer is not exactly Accurate, but let it go. It is a

255

story of which even grizzled Board of Trade men tell con-
flicting versions, — some saying that Joe simply underestimated
the available wheat-supply; some that Armour deliberately
"laid for him" ; others that the great packer did nothing of
the sort. It is told that after young Leiter— and his father, the
famous Levi Leiter, as well — was "in" several million, Armour
caused the ice in the "Soo" to be dynamited in the Winter of
1897-1898 — and the torrents of unexpected wheat swamped
a good part of the Leiter fortune. Also, Armour had built, in
record time, warehouses on Goose Island, to receive the ship-
loads of grain. But then, the packer was generous with the
young man in the end; and it only took a decade or two to
straighten out the mess in the courts. As every one knows, the
old-timer will remind you, the elder Leiter, once partner of
Marshall Field, had enough fortune left to finance handsomely
the marriage of his daughter Nancy to Lord Curzon — "You
know all about that/'

"Old Hutch" was still alive then, too. He had run a corner —
"Gosh, how long ago!" — one that was a corner. As the cen-
tury was ending, he could still be seen on the Board of Trade
floor, amid the din ; a tall, rather gaunt figure, smooth-faced
always, despite the vogue of beards. "He slept in his office,"
the veteran will tell you. They do say that he went beyond
even the best fashion of the day in absorbing — well, say fine
wines. Of his taste in literature it is recounted that he prized
both Shakespeare and Whittier . . . would recite Snowbound
in full „ . * made his bookkeeper learn the poem and say it
after hours. As for his taste in art, it did not keep pace with
that of his banker son, Charles L. Hutchinson, one of Chicago's
genuine connoisseurs.

"Charlie," says the old-timer, "was over in Europe ; picked
up a painting by — can't recall the feller's name — for some-
thing like $30,000. Old Hutch jeered. 'I wouldn't give a nickel
for it,' says he. When Charlie's estate was settled, that same
picture was valued at about $100,000."

You could see "Hutch" on the board. You could see Jim
256

Patten too. Rather young, vigorous, curt, a true speculator,
watching the market with scientific calm ; ready to hurl a for-
tune, but feeling as he did it that his operations (like his
famous wheat-deal in 1908) were the outgrowth of natural
conditions, and were for the real benefit of the country ; know-
ing he would be accused of running a corner. He was disliked
here and there, but respected even by traders whom he hurt.
And through all, he applied much of his fortune to civic good,
beginning at home, in the city of Evanston.

The Board of Trade, whose tall clock presided soberly over
the drone of the pit, has its own memories of "great days," of
thrills, many of which began to die out when the government
took hold of things during the World War.

"You mustn't,59 says the old-timer, "think of it as one of
them gambling-places. It's one of Chicago's big efforts for the
world ; and the world, from Japan to Argentine, and then up
to Alaska, knows it well enough."

In those days, on the glistening new sidewalks or the well-
paved streets, passed figures whose outlines have almost gone.

Visitors or entertainers: Susan B. Anthony, being driven
against her will to see a baseball game — "a silly waste of time,"
she called it. ... Nat Goodwin, sauntering along the boule-
vard with Maxine Elliott, and "so nice of him not to be jealous
of his wife." . . . Israel Zangwill, with black curly hair, come
to lecture. . . . Bryan, whose "Cross of Gold" speech still
echoed. . . „ Edouard de Reszke, leaving a train and saying,
"I shall not ride ze bee-ceecle in Tzecago, ze wind is so strong."
. » . Rudyard Kipling, pausing on his American tour, then
going away to write : "This place is the first American city I
have encountered. Having seen it I urgently desire never to
see it again. It is inhabited by savages."

tocal characters : Chubby Bob Burke, City Hall boss, stand-
ing, all smiles, in the Mayor's outer office. . * . Capt. James

5257

H. Farrell, martial with his great chest and white moustachios,
leading the silk-hatted platoons of that great marching club,
the County Democracy. . . . James B. Forgan, the banker
of bankers, Lyman Gage's successor, off to play golf at Bel-
mont, where he organized the first golf-club in 1892. ... A
youthful, amiable George M. Reynolds, lately come from Iowa
to be cashier of the Continental. . . . Mrs. Potter Palmer
whirling to a reception. . . . H. H. Kohlsaat on the steps of
the Chicago Club.

Or, more striking than all, aged Denis Swenie rattling along
in his light buggy, on the way to a fire. The great "smoke-
eater" was old when the new century began. Since 1849, when
he was fifteen, he had been a Chicago fireman, beginning when
the city had only six hand-engines. For more than twenty years
he had been chief, knowing every fire-trap in town, leading his
men into any sort of Hades — once leaving his own house to
burn while he scudded to another blaze. He built the Chicago
department to be, perhaps, the best in the country; drove
politics from it; seized every new scientific idea. In those days
around 1900 he was white-haired, a venerable figure. And so
it was great to see him, fairly snorting like his horse, drive
to a "4-11."

Our veteran, who seems to have been "all around every-
where," wants to tell about Jack Haverly and his minstrels,
and how Jack died poor in a hotel, all his money gambled away.
Or, he would speak of the Eden Musee, the gaudy collection
of wax-works, including a Chamber of Horrors; of Frank
Hall's Casino and Frank's Mirror Maze and Woods' Museum
— great stuff for the visiting farm-boys, but "perfectly re-
spectable, I'm telling you," Our "vet" would dwell upon the
Buckingham, swell dance-hall of the upper demi-monde ; or the
annual Mardi Gras fete, that drew the dandies and belles of the
Levee. "Though maybe that was before the World's Fair."
But he is persuaded to recall how at this time of late '90s,
258

in one of the popular saloons downtown, Big Dan Coughlin
stood ruminating at the bar he ownedjdong with Mike Me-
Namara, and what a history Dan had. / f 7 GPS*

"Not long out of the penitentiary, was Dan; acquittea on
his second trial for killing Dr. Cronin. . . . My gosh, the
Cronin case! I couldn't tell you the half of it in an evening;
but let me say, even as late as 1900 it gave some folks the
shivers to think about."

And right he is, the old-timer, for even yet the memory re-
turns, to people of sixty or more, of the long, fine-printed news-
paper columns, and what they told : how on the night of May
4, 1889, the popular Dr. Cronin was called for in front of
the Windsor Theater to attend a patient. The man who called
drove a white horse. It was the way then of "taking a man
for a ride." Like the scores of victims of later conspiracies,
the doctor never returned to his lodging. Days stretched out.
He was reported missing. Whispers grew in Irish secret circles ;
they grew into demands upon the police. Presently a bloody
trunk was picked up far out on the northwest side of the city,
then a lonely and mournful land ; and on this spot there was
discovered, jammed into a catch-basin, with crushed skull, the
naked body of the doctor.

It was the most horrible crime of the generation ; and it was
lent grisliness not only by the phantom of a white horse —
"Darned near every white horse in town was suspected," says
the veteran — but by the shadows of Irish politics that hung
over it. For Dr. Cronin was a leader in Camp 20 of the Clan-
na-Gael, then battling for the freedom of Ireland; he was
opposed to an inner circle called the Triangle. Treachery some-
where, then murder. A veil of secrecy; strange forgetfulness
of witnesses; forerunners, in a way, of events more than a
generation later, when unwritten oaths would lock men's lips,
just as in that early mystery actual vows — so it was insisted —
halted proceedings.

Big Dan, standing so calmly at his bar, had, with two others
of the five brought to trial, served part of a life-term in Joliet.

259

"Influence" brought him out for a second trial. He was freed.
The batteries of witnesses had been invaded by death and other
things. Facts once clear were now clouded and uncertain,
Coughlin reentered life, to be used now and then by "powerful
interests" in that early indoor sport — still very popular — of
bribing juries.

There was a yet more phantom-like figure, as the old-timer
recalls— Alexander Sullivan, a lawyer who was suspected but
powerful. Indicted among the first in those shuddery days of
May, '89, he was speedily freed by habeas corpus ; watched
from the side-lines while Coughlin and the rest "got theirs55;
lived also to be accused of jury-bribing, and finally freed.

"And I remember," says the veteran, "seeing him walking
the streets, cool as you please ; either the most innocent man or
the iron-nervedest of the whole population. . . . But I heard
say how when he was brought into the State's attorney's office
for jury-bribing, long about 1900, he was jumpy for once;
looked like a caged leopard ; and when they told him the charge,
how he breathed a sigh — for, you see, he thought they were
after him for the Cronin murder."

Over such tragedies, the passions of a city Celtic in mood,
and actually five per cent. Celtic in population, rose high, then
abated. It seemed that in a Chicago not yet emerged from a
6Cwi\d West" naivete and carelessness, adventurers might be
jailed — but they were prized. Or, as our veteran might say,
"There were bad guys — always interesting, though."

He is induced to recall a character whose history was weirdly
intertwined with that of Chicago through fully thirty years, a
character straight out of Dickens — Captain George Welling-
ton Streeter. Oh, the old-timer can remember the "cap'n" away
back to the first (a Summer in the '80s), when the small craft
navigated by that Civil War veteran and descendant of 1776
260

fighters, was driven ashore, and the great idea of his life was
born.

It was born during days when the little ship Reutan had re-
fused to be wrenched off the sands, and Streeter and his wife
Maria, lodging there perforce, began, after months, to fancy
that the generous lake deposited sand around the stranded hull.
There was land — "free" land — on the same spot where, whether
Streeter knew it or not, other squatters had, in years past,
clung to a tatterdemalion existence. The captain, smarter than
they, not only saw the claims that might be based on a survey
made as early as 1821, but was able to organize his venture.
He knew Chicago well from as far back as 1861 ; had been one
of its entertainers as owner of the old Apollo Theater*

His brain, acute despite whiskey-fumes, marched on to a
dream of a kingdom, or at least a commonwealth. He elected
himself head of the state, and called his domain the District of
Lake Michigan, which he declared independent of both Chicago
and Illinois. He owned allegiance to Washington, however, and
battered vainly at official doors for recognition.

He was holding the fort during the World's Fair, having by
that time moved from the Reutan to a shanty from whose stove-
pipe chimney, in Winter, smoke rose like the steam of the Cap-
tain's own expletives. He clung on through hard times and
good, growing constantly in pride, aware that the newspapers
had made him a public figure ; always glad to be interviewed,
but holding a long Springfield rifle, with a bayonet, across his
arm as a threat to constables. Meanwhile, he sold lots cheap to
hundreds of gullible mortals, to whom the survey of 1821 was
just as good as the one of 1833 or even 1883.

"I saw him at his auctions," says the old-timer, "standing
there, his fuzzy tile-hat back on his head, his face brick-red.
He had a ragged tawny moustache, and he could talk the arm
off ye."

Wealthy residents along that shore were "agin the Cap'n."
They could look across the sandy waste and see the shanty,

261

cockily poised on the lake's edge, and customers standing in
line. Potter Palmer and N. K. Fairbank were two millionaires
who kept saying that Streeter must go. So did the Chicago
Title and Trust Company, powerful protector of property-
rights. These or others sent armed constables or police to dis-
pose of George and Maria. Once the latter, a slangy Yankee
woman of the motherly type, but a tigress on behalf of her
lord, helped scare off with rifles the fellows wearing stars. No
less loyal was William IL Niles, who for a time ranked as "Mili-
tary Governor" of the District. Says our veteran:

"I saw one scrimmage. A bunch of coppers was about to drag
the Cap'n off by the collar, when Maria emptied boiling water
on 'em, and they were glad to go."

And again, it being then more than fifteen years since
Streeter landed, Lincoln Park and city police assembled in an
army of hundreds, besieged the shanty, amid much random
shooting — one or two of the besiegers were winged — and
finally the besieged, who included stout souls like one Billy
McManners, were captured. Streeter did not stay in jail this
time, but eventually his sharp-shooters killed a "trespasser."
The Captain (then a widower) served time in Joliet. He
emerged in less than a year, feeling good over lots that went
right on finding buyers while he "languished." Courts sat upon
the cases his claims brought about. Erudite lawyers sought au-
thorities that would for good and all banish the fantastic
legend that the Captain had rights. The Captain was hauled
before judges who frowned upon his bold, profane way of
talking, and one of them put him in a cell for contempt.

He stalked the streets, when free, delighting in his lime-
light, a "throw-back" in a Chicago growing taller than his
own visions. Always he had money, tobacco in his cheek, a sense
of heroism.

At last he lost all, and died. Upon the sands he had "owned"

there grew up the impressive Northwestern University group

of buildings, the monster Furniture Mart, a growing mass of

"swell" apartments and business buildings. The investments

262

are said to total more than $50,000,000. What the holders of
Streeter titles, still believing, consider themselves worth runs
to millions more.

In the new city not many people are left to drop tears over
the departed Cap'n — half idol, half "butt." Nor are there many
to echo his words of one day, applied to his own District, but
doubtless a sort of defiance of the whole of Chicago :

"This is a frontier town, and it's got to go through its red-
blooded youth. A church and a W.C.T.U. never growed a big
town yet."

CHAPTER VIII

.._. FRONTIER town !

There were some traces of it still, in a new century* It had
spurts of horse-play, and sometimes derision for culture. A
man could be heard saying at the station, when the opera
troupe (Nordica, Planfon, the De Reszkes, and others) came
in : "There he is, the fellow I once laid down three hard-earned
'cases' to hear sing at the Auditorium." A dapper broker
greeted the announcement of a municipal Art League with the
words: "I suppose they're going to hang bows of pink ribbon
on the lamp-posts."

But the city was growing up. It was finishing, or under-
taking, vast public works. It was housing itself in new pat-
terns of stone; and it was digging new wonders below its sur-
face.

Part of this labyrinth of underground work was an addition
to the long miles of water-tunnels, begun as far back as the
'60s, when that genius, E» S. Chesbrough, was city engineer,
and now grown to a system of veritable rivers, bringing to the
people, underneath the city, fresh water from the lake. But
another part was a scheme, daring enough, of a network of
264

tubes below the chief streets of the city within which telephone
and telegraph wires should run — and, after a while, freight-
cars. The City Council granted a franchise for the tunnels in

1899, and within four years, while most people walked the
upper levels indifferently enough, the burrowers working in the
blue-clay depths had constructed twenty miles of tube. These
were to grow, during a generation, to sixty miles, with track-
age, electric-drawn cars, connections with railroad stations,
freight-houses, big office buildings ; and to take off the streets
the equivalent of five thousand "motor-truck movements" per
day. Package-freight, coal, and the cinders of skyscrapers go
through these tubes.

Above ground, where everybody could see and admire, the
stone symbols of an ambitious people continued to pile up.
Building was brisk. The housing-need, for thousands of work-
ers as well as families, was severe. But in the big year 1900
progress of the kind was threatened by the longest and bitter-
est struggle between building-trades and bosses that Chicago
had ever known. They collided — the two central bodies — not
only over hours of work, and over sympathetic strikes, but over
union-restrictions to the amount of labor and to use of ma-
chinery. Some seven thousand men became idle in February,

1900. The layman was puzzled whether to call it a strike or a
lockout.

Whichever it was, it resembled a civil war. First, a war of
words, in which "tyranny" figured freely, and the contractors
said that domination by the unions must stop, or no man could
be assured of life, liberty, and happiness. Then a war of fists,
of brass knuckles, and now and then a shooting. (No sawed-off
shotguns then.) The contractors* army of detectives came to
include some hundreds, whose payroll, it is said, mounted to
$50,000 a month. The union sluggers were fewer, but shrewdly
generaled. Through a whole year, while idle workers came to
number 50,000, department-store losses grew enormous, and
scores of new pawnbrokers' signs were hung out, the deadlock
kept on.

265

Graham Taylor— hit direct by stoppage of work on part^of
his Chicago Commons building— and other civic leaders tried
to bring about arbitration. So did Mayor Harrison. Neither
side would yield. At length, as the months dragged along, the
contractors wore down the unions, building was resumed; the
whole thing ended rather inconclusively, except that the men
got part of their demands, and the eight-hour day received a
fresh buttress. Some people said that there was a victory for
arbitration somewhere.

Behind a lot of this trouble lurked the silent, nicely tailored,
humorously cruel personality of one M. B. ("Skinny") Mad-
den— not the Congressman. He was president of the Junior
Steam-fitters5 Union. Personally, he did not do any steam-
fitting. He sat in an obscure office, pulled wires that made
certain puppet "labor leaders" jump, and directed a gang of
"wreckers.55

The fear of Madden was almost comic. He could demand
$1,000 or more for "settling55 a strike, and get it, every time.
He could step in on a big building-enterprise and collect up to
$10,000 or $20,000, easily. During a spectacular Fall Festival
the city held in 1899, when the cornerstone of the Federal
Building was laid, the dignified committee was shocked to be
asked to pay a "fine55 of $5,000 because the stone had — the
labor men said — been cut by scabs. Another stone had to be
cut. The idea must have been Madden's. He had philosophies.
He said:

"Show me an honest man, and FU show you a damned fool.55

But he also said :

"I take money away from the rich nobs. As for my friends,
I never shake 5em down.55

This was proved true. He loaned money lavishly; he spread
joy among the poor at Christmas. Once he forced his men to
return a fat sum to a sporting character with whom he fished
in Summer. They had picked on the wrong man.

866

His rule of his union, while at its height, was extraordinary.
He dominated by his brains, as much as by his six-foot slug-
gers ; by sheer "gall," too. At one meeting, as the story goes,
he proposed a motion that he be elected president for life.
Standing on the platform, flanked by his "bad men," he said:

"All in favor stand up."

A number rose.

"Now," he said, glaring around, "if any wants to

get up and vote no, let him try it."

The affirmative vote was unanimous.

In the great building tie-up of 1900, he played a role not as
conspicuous as in the long series of troubles after that. His
name was a black one in the press. His sluggers found hundreds
of victims, but murders were few. Men battered and maimed
each other then, seldom shot each other from ambush.

At length Madden began to slip, as regards his power in
the Federation of Labor. He crashed against a well-muscled
and brainy person named Edward Nockels. There was a con-
test of wits, of stratagems, as well as of fists. Nockels prevailed.
Madden's union was expelled from the American Federation;
he was fined $500 in court, for extortion. He turned into a
sort of outcast ; then retired to private life, became legendary
as "the first big labor-grafter."

He had successors, but few who have been regarded with the
same mixture of fear and liking. When he died, though he had
handled fortunes, he left only a few thousands.

Through all the fracases, all the alternating terrors and
delights, of those years following the World's Fair, one great
task never paused. The long, symmetrical carving in earth and
rock, the mighty Sanitary Canal, was lengthening mile by
mile.

By the end of 1899 workmen numbering thousands had dug
the main channel twenty-eight and a half miles, partly through

267

glacial drift, and partly through solid rock. It was an epic in
toil. Visitors who made half-holiday excursions to the scene saw
muddy battalions swarming in the channel; they saw quaint
devices — cars drawn up inclines to "tipples," specially-made
conveyors, pneumatic dumpers, hydraulic dredges, channeling
machines— laboring like metal dinosaurs. Terrific dynamite-
explosions smote the ears of these visitors ; the huge piles of
waste earth and stone mounted. Witnesses saw the canal turn
into a long canyon with smooth walls, parts of which were
streaked with strata of limestone.

Altogether, the multitude of men and machines working
through those years hurled up out of the cut 42,229,000 cubic
yards of material. There was enough earth to make an island
a mile square, and twelve feet above ground, in water forty
feet deep. There was waste stone lying along the rock-cut path
which, it was figured, would have furnished foundation to pave
all the streets in Chicago then unpaved — and these were many.

Besides the excavation in the canal proper, the Sanitary Dis-
trict of Chicago had cut a new river-diversion channel for the
Desplaines, to prevent its flooding the main channel; it had
built a spillway, or concrete dam, 397 feet long, to take care of
surplus water temporarily ; it had created at Lockport the con-
trolling-works, consisting of sluice-gates and a bear-trap dam
that had metal leaves hinged together and controlled by valves.
Many other jobs of construction, of building bridges and
dams, of deepening the Chicago River, had been accomplished.

It was thus that the modest "divide" at Summit, for so many
years a problem and a lure, was pierced to the great advan-
tage of a city. Another dream had come true. There now ex-
isted a canal not less than 110 feet wide at bottom, in some
places 160 feet (wider than the Panama Canal), 20 feet deep,
and built to accommodate a maximum flow of 600,000 feet a
minute, providing drainage for a population of 3,000,000.

This labor had continued since September, 1892, its prog-
ress sometimes threatened by dirty politics. Graft was not ab-
sent. Contractors fattened on extras. There were attacks by in-
268

dignant taxpayers. Thus the trustees struggled on, always
under a cloud of hostility shown by the city of St. Louis and
towns that shared its views. The objectors saw a dark and
dreadful city to the north, a city whose sewage — it was claimed
— had collected on its river-bank by the ton, menacing the
health of the Mississippi Valley. The weapons of the objectors
were speeches and injunction-suits. Of these the Chicago trus-
tees feared the latter the more.

There was no gay multitude, there were no steamers with
flags waving, when the impatient waters were first turned into
the main channel, on the morning of January 2, 1900. At a
meeting late the night before the bolder members of the Sani-
tary District Board — such as President William Boldenweck
and Bernard A. Eckhart — had forced a decision to start the
flow at once. They had a flea — actually three fleas — on their
backs in the shape of the Illinois and Michigan Canal Com-
missioners, guardians of the ancient ditch so gloriously opened
in 1848, but now for many years deemed inadequate. This trio
threatened to block the State permit required for the big canal ;
but at the eleventh hour, they compromised.

As to injunctions, the Chicago board was in the dark, and
could only worry. Hence the speed and secrecy. At nine o'clock
that cold, clear January morning, the entire body of trustees
appeared on the canal-bank, at a place where water was to be
turned into a timbered chute leading from a collateral chan-
nel connecting with the west fork of the south branch of the
river. A ridge of earth was all that made a barrier. The trus-
tees attacked it lustily with nine shiny new shovels. But this
was going too slow. A dredge was summoned. In less than two
hours the steam leviathan brought up the last bucketful of
earth that formed the ridge. At once the water from the Chi-
cago River boiled and foamed down the sluice-way into the
canal.

The trustees waved their hats and cheered. With them, hold-
ing one of the new spades, stood a grizzled, determined-looking
gentleman named Ossian Guthrie; a name charmingly fitting

269

his personality. He was a grandson of Samuel Guthrie, discov-
erer of chloroform, and had designed the steam-engine for the
first tug plying the Chicago River. At the very outset of the
Sanitary Canal enterprise, when the venerable Citizens5 Asso-
ciation began to boom it, Ossian Guthrie did valuable work. He
had a right to see this grand opening. And beside him there
should have stood, to make things complete, "Judge" Harvey
B. Kurd, who had framed the bill that separated the Sanitary
District from the financially overburdened city, and gave it
bonding power.

The chief engineer was now tall, ruddy, bearded Isham Ran-
dolph, who had seen the job through, following the terms of
Engineers Samuel Artingstall and Benezette Williams.

That operation of the second of January had gone only
part way in starting the waters down their new course. A little
work at the Joliet end remained, and by the middle of the
month this was finished. Meantime, the menace of injunctions
to prevent "pollution of the Mississippi" had become more defi-
nite. It was rumored that the St. Louis district attorney was
about to petition the United States Supreme Court, and action
in the Chicago branch of the Federal court was threatened.

The word went about the Canal Board offices on January 16,
"They're going before Judge Kohlsaat in the morning." For
a second time in a fortnight the harassed trustees faced an
emergency. A midnight meeting brought a resolution to turn
on the water immediately in the section of the canal between
Lockport and Joliet. A special train was ordered, and the sleep-
less trustees piled aboard* Nervous they were, but determined.
Mr. Eckhart pulled his black moustache. Another trustee, re-
ported observant newspaper men, exhausted three whole pack-
ages of chewing-gum. On board also were the State Canal Com-
missioners, including Col. John Lambert, steel-magnate, ami-
ably on watch lest permits and the like be disregarded.
270

Arrived at Lockport, the party snatched a few hours' sleep
and then sat waiting in a hotel lobby for a telegram from
Governor Tanner authorizing the final step in the 'inaugura-
tion. No message arrived, but there came an unknown bearing
a document which he began to read. Its first words sounded like
an injunction, and the trustees' hair stood on end. Finally the
reader broke off and laughed. The thing was a hoax. A local
editor, who rightly guessed that these Chicagoans, even ami*1
heavy anxiety, could enjoy a joke, had framed it.

Time drew on to about the hour when courts open. * , . No
injunction yet. . . . The trustees sprang to their feet when
they were told, "Governor Tanner on the 'phone." Telegraph
wires had failed, and the Governor, helping in the crisis, had
decided to issue a verbal permit.

Nothing could stop the thing now. Followed only by report-
ers and a few officials, the little group of trustees repaired to
the controlling-works. While with the tail of their eyes they
doubtless watched for a breathless deputy with a writ, they
stood by as a foreman worked the machinery of the great bear-
trap dam ; with tremendous sighs of relief they saw a mass of
green water shoot down the face of the dam and course like
Niagara rapids towards Joliet and points south. Days would
be required to fill the huge channel. A greater flow must be cre-
ated to reach the stated maximum per minute. But the job was
a fact — and now let St. Louis bring on its injunction. St. Louis
did so, but too late*

A few zealots, on the morning of January 2, had seen the
water gush into the main channel, changing from murk to clear
blue as it passed. Now on the day when the flow had been es-
tablished throughout the length of the cut, people in the heart
of Chicago were treated to a sight that thrilled even those who
knew little of its cause.

The creeping stream, that had sulked for years in its valley
of sooty brick buildings, the river brown and foul, disfigured

by driftwood, carrion, and rotten ice, was flowing upstream!
The sense of the miraculous grew. Reports even went around
that Bubbly Creek, the south branch cesspool for the stock-
yards, had for the first time a current!

Downtown crowds stood on the bridges, business men de-
layed their appointments, clerks risked prolonging their lunch-
hour, to watch the unfolding miracle of a brown old river
turned blue; to see it perform the impossible, and slide away
from the lake, carrying on a perceptible current its slabs of ice.
This historic stream, "whose name,55 as a chronicler put it,
"had become a synonym for liquid hideousness," had been re-
formed— at a cost, up to then, of more than $23,000,000 for
construction, plus $10,000,000 for other expenses. Once be-
fore there had been a similar thrill, but it died out, for the
pumps would not keep the current moving. Now, for a new
generation, there was visible "magic."

In Chicago newspapers were celebrating the event in words
like these :

"Seven years and four months ago the first shovelful of
earth was lifted to begin the construction. Thousands of doubt-
ers then declared that the day never would dawn which would
see the completion of the work. But now the end is in sight. The
waters have been turned back ; the current of the river has been
reversed. It is the beginning of the final stage of the enter-
prise, which is national in character. In time must come a deep-
waterway connection of Lake Michigan with the Mississippi
River. The story of the Chicago Sanitary Canal illustrates the
audacity, pluck, and enterprise which have made Chicago a
familiar name the world over.55

Always that deep-waterway motif, so old and yet so thrill-
ing ! A fine resounding theme with which to win the favor of
grumbling towns downstate, and to soothe the Mississippi Val-
ley as a whole. While there grew up through the years an in-

termittent controversy over the canal-flow, the lake-level, city
water-meters — a hot issue as late as Thompson's third term —
the vision of a ship canal binding Chicago to the Gulf never
receded. Mass-meetings and other propaganda in towns along
the proposed route brought about what was called the Lakes
to the Gulf Deep Waterway Association, and in 1908 an
amendment to the State constitution empowered the Legisla-
ture to issue bonds for the construction of a waterway. Actual
work was to be delayed for a dozen years.

But no matter how much the waterway was postponed, the
effect upon Chicago's health of the Sanitary Canal, taken to-
gether with intercepting sewers flowing into it, and with new
water-tunnels, was tremendous. The dreadful typhoid-rate fell
sensationally. By 1905, it had been brought down, owing to
purer water and milk-pasteurization, from 1,489 in '92, to
370. In 1921 there were but thirty deaths from typhoid. In
1928 there were only eleven. Deaths of infants one to five years
of age fell from 4,238 in 1892 to 2,643 in 1905, and 1,669 in
1927.

The public seldom bothered with such figures. But it was
eternally proud of its river that ran uphill.

273

CHAPTER IX

HE city of those days, no less than now, abounded in com-
edy, alternating with eruptions of tragedy.

Events rose and fell on the heaving mass of its normal life —
the increasingly prosperous, more and more efficient, and gen-
erally monotonous life of the wage-earner and the professional
classes. The newspapers became more vivid. Hearst came into
the field, and other dailies acquired new stripes. Local news
popped on every side; city editors lived at telephones.

Harrison held on in the City Hall. Political factions concen-
trated, fell apart; others moved into the fissures and clung for
a while. Names like Lorimer, Pease, Jarnieson, Deneen, Busse,
Bob Burke, were woven in and out of the daily record. A jury-
bribery case (the "pin-brigade" case) involving a bearded ad-
venturer named Bill Gallagher and a popular lawyer, Patrick
O'Donnell, had a run for weeks. Chubby, swarthy Burke,
known as (XK. Burke for evident reasons, was locked out of the
rooms of the County Democracy, which silk-hatted regiment he
had controlled. Murders were committed and forgotten, unless/
it might be an unforgettable one, like the boiling of Mrs. Luet-
gert in a vat by her sausage-maker husband. Scandals envel-
oped names now strewn upon the winds.

New problems appeared; automobile "scorchers/' for one.
274

Said the aroused mayor, "Something must be done about those
fellows who run their machines ten to twenty miles an hour.
I'm in favor of compelling the gears of all machines to be not
above eight miles an hour.5'

The world heard spasmodically about such things in Chi-
cago, sneered or pitied, but more often laughed.

It laughed until its sides ached when a court decision upheld
the litigation of a Chicago real-estate man against the actor
Richard Mansfield and A. M. Palmer, his manager, over the
authorship of the famous play, Cyrano de Bergerac. It was
amusing enough to have the real-estate man sue. To have him
win — that was side-splitting.

The plaintiff was Samuel Eberly Gross, who since the late
'60s had made a fortune in subdivisions and small houses, and
had established at least sixteen suburbs, two of them bearing
his name. An account written in 1894 said that during the pre-
ceding ten years he had sold over 30,000 lots and had built
more than 7,000 houses ; he still had 25,000 lots for sale. While
the city and country were thoroughly familiar with his sign-
boards, pioneering in an appeal now spread over Christendom,
very few knew anything at all of Mr. Gross as a playwright.

Yet it appeared by his pleading before the Federal court
that in the late '70s he had written a drama which he called
The Merchant Prince of Cornville. It had a character in it
with a huge nose. This character stood under a balcony imper-
sonating a stupid lover to a Juliet-like lady dimly seen above.
The resemblance to Cyrano was obvious. Edmond Rostand had
written the latter play in the early '90s.

A masterly copyright-lawyer, Frank R. Reed, handled the
case of Mr. Gross, who accused M. Rostand of plagiarism and
prayed an injunction. Master-in-chancery Sherman took depo-
sitions, including a very angry one on the part of M. Rostand.
Among other things, the French dramatist cried, when the co-

275

incidence of two characters with two big noses was cited: "But
there are big noses everywhere in the world !"

Having examined a host of witnesses, including the great
actor Coquelin— who created the part of Cyrano at the theater
Porte St. Martin in 1897— the manager Constant Coquelin,
truculent Mansfield, and others, Master Sherman brought in
an eighty-one-page report declaring that Cyrano was "a clear
and unmistakable piracy." It was brought out that Mr. Gross
in 1875 had left his manuscript for Constant Coquelin to ex-
amine, but it was returned. Suspicious circumstance! Mr.
Sherman pointedly remarked that "the mere fact that M. Ro-
stand is a dramatic author of celebrity and the complainant
an American citizen and successful business man does not show
that the distinguished French dramatist has not appropriated
the fruits of toil. . . . The greatest dramatists have been the
most persistent purloiners of the literary property of those

less gifted."

It was on this report that Judge Christian C. Kohlsaat en-
joined Mansfield and Palmer from presenting Cyrano, and
awarded royalties — which, however, the wealthy Mr. Gross
waived. The cables sped this decision to Paris. Sarah Bern-
hardt remarked, "It must be the first of April in Chicago."
The actor Coquelin was in bed at that morning hour when the
news was read to him. He spilled his coffee on his pillow, leaped
up, careered about the room, bursting with laughter, and at
length cried out, "Certainly this is a gay world!"

On the border-line between comedy and tragedy rose the
spectacle of John Alexander Dowie seeking to defend his king-
dom against unbelieving creditors and their lawyers. The white-
bearded prophet, whose assumed title "Elijah" made strap-
hangers smile, had for years been drawing to him followers pa-
thetically loyal and crack-brained, many of them illiterate im-
migrants. He had established Zion City, with its lace-mills,

276

candy-factory, and whatnot. He was rich; his idiotically de-
signed dwelling had fine rugs and hardwood. The property
which he ruled was worth, he thought, fully $25,000,000. For-
gotten were the days when he had been mobbed and forced to
flee through the streets.

The dogs of creditors assailed him in December, 1902, and
a receiver was appointed. There were liabilities of $385,000.
Dowie appealed in stentorian voice from the pulpit of his barn-
like tabernacle ; it was said that he wept and tore his beard as
he begged for money to save the threatened kingdom. There
were reports that while he collected new funds, hundreds of the
dupes of his teachings, workers in his factories, shivered and
went ragged in their wooden shacks covered with tar paper, in
the canvas tents some of them occupied, in that most desolate
of cities on the bleak North Shore above Chicago. Meanwhile
cables told how Mrs. Dowie and the son Gladstone were riding
about Cannes, France, in "an elegant Victoria."

The crisis passed; the receiver was withdrawn; but Dowie
began to break. He lived only four and a half years more ; lived
to be ousted from power by his favorite overseer, Wilbur Glen
Voliva.

Out of the slums came four boys, children of a bleak, fero-
cious region of the city, with a garbage-dump its chief land-
mark. They could bear no more of the monotony and hideous-
ness of life; they could find nothing but tedium in work.
Throughout their boyhood they had beheld feuds, race-hatreds,
families embroiled with other families — all they learned was
revolver-marksmanship. So Gustav Marx, Harvey Van Dine,
Peter Niedemeyer, and Emil Roeski, set forth to be outlaws. On
an August night they invaded a street-car barn, killed a clerk
and wounded others, then robbed the place. After months, Marx
was trapped, murdered a policeman in the fight, then confessed.
Soon the three others were traced to a cave beyond the Indiana
line among the sand-dunes5 where they were living royally on

277

cake and dime novels. A tremendous posse of detectives, sher-
iffs' deputies, and others besieged the cave, exchanged volleys
with the three boys, received wounds. Their tales of the deadly
aim and terrific armament of the besieged seemed a bit exag-
gerated.

The youths fled, climbed aboard a gravel-train, killed a
brakeman, and taking command of the locomotive ran it a few
miles, then escaped to a cornfield, where they surrendered
rather tamely. All but Roeski were hanged. The crime echoed
long in police-squad rooms and newspaper offices, until dwarfed
by banditries of a later era.

No comedy about this ; nor in the police-scandal of the time.
That concerned no "dapper" gangsters and their vendettas and
acquittals, but brought to the surface the horror of an under-
world ruled and enslaved by greedy coppers in plain clothes.
There had been steadily growing complaint against the police.
A crime wave was on during the deepening Winter of 1902-
1903. No glittering motors drew up before banks, filled with
machine-guns ; no cashiers were kidnaped, "taken for a ride,"
forced to open safety-vaults. But there were persistent hold-
ups, house burglaries, plain shootings with old-fashioned auto-
matic pistols. So Chicago grew angry ; it was reminded that it
had vicious resorts and crooked gambler^, and that the young
were being corrupted, not to speak of the old. A commission of
aldermen sat for many weeks. Chief of Police O'Neill, an ami-
able soul with a scholarly aptitude in the field of Irish music,
was "grilled." Famous inspectors like Patrick Lavin were tar-
gets. Even the behemoth Andy Rohan, everybody's friend and
tenderly regarded by detective-bureau reporters, was briefly
under a cloud.

There came from the underworld many a sad female figure,
bef eathered creatures wearing cracked smiles, or worn and sor-
rowful ghosts, to testify to police "shake-downs." They con-
378

fronted a roomful of aldermen, lawyers, bond-sharks, and po-
lice who knew their first names, with as little fear as shame.
Frightful stories of slavery mingled with the perennial expose
of protected gambling and "brace games."

The black side of the city was turned upward, and not for
the first time, that the "upper dog" might look. Police inspec-
tors, jolted from their complacence, herded resort-inmates into
forlorn groups and told them to move on. A large citizens' com-
mittee was formed to make the usual exhortations about crime,
while women who could always be counted on to try to make a
wicked city good, women like Miss Addams, Mary McDowell of
the five-year-old University of Chicago Settlement, and Mrs.
Ellen Henrotin, president of the Chicago Woman's Club, or-
ganized to protect the women witnesses and rescue the fallen.

Mrs. Henrotin answered interviewers with sane words. She
quoted Prince (now King) Albert of the Belgians, who, when
some one called that country the open forum of Europe, re-
marked, "Yes, but I sometimes fear that so much talking im-
pedes action." Said Mrs. Henrotin, "We in Chicago have
talked a great deal about reform in the last few years, but it
does not appear that we have done what we have been saying
should be done."

Mayor Harrison started a "clean-up" forthwith. Among
other things, he revoked the license of a saloon (with crooked
gambling in the rear) belonging to a powerful person called
Mushmouth Johnson^j^nd he struck similarly at the even then
powerful gambler Mont Tennes. / ) $j &^ ^*^/i4J/C^v

These and other targets did not much mind. Soon things
went on about as before. The women witnesses returned to the
red-light district, wiser and possibly even sadder. The music
took on a crescendo.

During that period society held a grand bal poudre for
charity. It was so called because those aristocratic enough to
be admitted wore costumes of the time of the French Louis's.

279

The Auditorium, said a current account, "was turned into a
veritable fairyland." Of course, Johnny Hand, incomparable
bandsman and phrase-maker, led the orchestra.

"And who shall say," burst out the chronicler, "which lady
carried off the honors for being the most beautiful, the one of
the quickest wit, the most clever? Was it beautiful Mrs. Hon-
ore Palmer, or vivacious Mrs. P. A, Valentine, or Mrs. Ogden
Armour, or Mrs. Harry G. Selfridge, or Mrs. Arthur Caton,
or Mrs. Dr. J. B. Murphy?"

The underworld watched, beyond a barrier of detectives.

Overshadowing all the events of those years, combining all
the dark drama, the irony, the ignorance, and the ruthlessness
that had developed within the young city along with its glo-
ries, was the disaster of the Iroquois Theater.

The date of it — December 30, 1903 — is one date that Chi-
cago remembers, though it may turn to old almanacs for the
rest. Mention the Iroquois Theater horror and the memories
of thousands, even young people, record at once a Christmas
week when the theaters had spread out their richest menu:
Wilton Lackaye with his company; Raymond Hitchcock in
The Yankee Consul, Floradora and its sextet, Viola Allen in
Twelfth Night— and above all, "a delight for the children, an
extravaganza called Mr. Bluebeard," with Eddie Foy at his
best. It is remembered that the beautiful new Iroquois, "com-
pletely fireproof," commodious, charming in its fittings, at-
tracted crowds to see it as well as to laugh at Mr. Bluebeard.
Any number of family parties were formed for the matinee of
December 30; teachers free of school had whole rows of seats;
mothers brought in their children from small towns.

Fate had set the stage for a great calamity as cleverly as the
crew behind the Iroquois curtain had shaped the settings of
Mr. Bluebeard. What happened, in brief, was this:

The audience, people of every age and kind, gazed enrap-
280

tured at the beauties of the choicest scene, set in "pale moon-
light"; a double octet was singing the dreamy song-number; it
was the second act, and the time was 3.15 P.M. A curl of smoke
was seen near the flies. It was the red velvet curtain which,
caught back to the proscenium-arch, had taken fire, probably
from the "floodlight." Not many in the audience noticed any-
thing. Those on the stage had seen too many little fires start
and be quenched. But now flimsy pieces of scenery caught. It
was a real fire !

Eddie Foy stepped to the footlights and called, "Please be
quiet ! There is no danger." He grinned determinedly ; he urged
the orchestra to play. There he stood, with the grease-paint
concealing his pallor, and his absurd costume contributing a
freakish note.

The company now began to think of their safety. A stage-
door was opened; a skylight tinkled to pieces; and the draft
blew the fire into a sheet of flame and deadly gases, which
swept across the footlights — "like the deadly vapors that were
hurled down Mont Pelee," wrote an inspired reporter — and
scorched and choked people everywhere in the shallow audi-
torium. They were now jamming and climbing toward the
doors. It was not so difficult to escape from the main floors, even
though crowds were standing behind the last rows. In the bal-
cony, with its narrower aisles and complex arrangement, there
was no escape. In darkness — for the electric lights had gone
out — the men, women, and children knocked themselves against
exits which they found locked. There were iron gates at stair-
way-landings to keep the gallery folk from turning into the
dress circle. These also were locked. There was no light over
exit doors ; some of these were hidden by draperies.

On an alley wall, where the architects had thought to give
the best of protection, were windows, emergency exits, and iron
fire-escapes. Throngs, who had escaped being trampled under
foot, rushed down these fire-escapes, met at stairways leading
to the street, and were hurled into the struggling swarm. In a
few minutes two hundred dead were piled up in a twenty-foot

281

angle of one stairway. A door opened, and flames from within
killed those still alive who would not jump. A group of work-
men in the Northwestern University quarters over the alley laid
planks across, and a few people with clothing aflame escaped
by this bridge.

Not fifteen minutes had gone since the first alarm, and fire-
men were pouring streams of water on the building, unaware
that so many — the total death roll was 596 — had died, tram-
pled or suffocated, within. Soon the fire-companies, police, and
newspapermen rushed into the darkness with torches, and
found hundreds dead or dying. Reporters dropped notebooks
and helped carry out bodies. Some, called into their offices, lay
down on the floor — old hands as they were — fainting. Never
had they viewed such a scene ; never had innocence been so sav-
agely crushed, nor death been so pitiable. One of them wrote,
statistically, before he collapsed, "Five bushels of women's
purses were picked up, and two barrels of slippers" . . .

Scores of the dead or dying were carried to a near-by lunch-
room and laid on the crude marble-top table. Other blanketed
bodies lay in rows along the curbs.

There followed awful scenes in morgues and hospitals, iden-
tifications, wrong identifications, weeks of failure to recognize
bodies which lay waiting in undertaking-rooms.

There followed a season of funerals, when sometimes two or
three white hearses would head a single procession. Church-
bells chimed for an hour on one day of mourning, and people
stood bareheaded in the streets. In saloons, it was said, men sat
with untasted liquor before them.

Scarcely less grim than the disaster itself, whose description
ran into pages of newsprint and entire books, was the official
aftermath, the dreary and interminable "investigation." The
coroner sat, heavy-faced, with his jury, listening to the testi-
mony of survivors, then to the mumbled alibis of building-
282

inspectors who had failed to inspect, then to the long-winded
remarks of the police- and fire-chiefs, and the opinions of
Mayor Harrison and his reminder that he had warned the
City Council about the theaters weeks before, and the "I —
thought — everything was — all right" of the theater-managers.
The torrents of questions and answers flowed for days. Slimy
facts came to light, such as that building-inspectors were
bribed with passes to shows. Blame was passed back and forth ;
high officials "got out from under.55 In the end a long list of
people, headed by the Mayor and the theater-managers, Will
J. Davis, Harry Powers, and others, were held to the grand
jury; the Mayor, however, obtained a writ of habeas corpus.
Clarence Darrow was arguing, "It is not just to lay the sins
of a generation upon the shoulders of a few.5' Most of the re-
sponsible men were indicted — and after a while freed of guilt.
The only happy result was a new long and stern set of regu-
lations for theaters. They are one reason why, in every large
city today, there are steel curtains, broad aisles, better floor-
pitch, good exits, and other things.

Meantime Europe had indulged in the same frenzy of self-
search and padlocking of theaters as took place in Chicago.
The Kaiser ordered his Royal Opera House closed for inspec-
tion. In England, Holland, Sweden, Ireland, officials acted.
There came a terrific housecleaning — and destitution among
the actor folk. Stars were idle; casts walked the streets. Even
the run of Ten Nights in a Bar-Room halted. And, striking a
note almost prophetic of the world-voice of a later generation,
a Berlin newspaper declared:

"It is certain that life is cheaper in Chicago than anywhere
in America. This is only a new and more terrifying chapter
added to the story of murder, robbery, strikes, and railway ac-
cidents."

383

CHAPTER X

HAT great costume-piece, The Coming of the Immigrant,
went on from year to year with more and more bizarre effect,
with the roar of many feet pouring onto a stage. Into this city
of wonders, advertised to them as glittering with gold, caressed
by kind winds, more beautiful than New Jerusalem, streamed
the peoples of Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, to find
no Paradise at all. Seeing them, an imaginative person could
almost use Whitman's words :

"I hear the cry of the Cossack, and the sailor's voice

putting to sea at Okhotsk . . .

I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms,
I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the
strong legends of the Romans . * ."

The crowds at railroad stations, the unlucky wights collared
by the police, the shattered and sick carted off to gloomy hos-
pitals, were changing in feature and color. They were darken-
ing, still darkening. From 1900 on, the flow of folk wearing
outlandish remnants of native wear, curious headdresses or
jewelry or kerchiefs or belts, people chattering in unknown dia-
lects, grew greater. Many were from southeastern Europe, The
census classified a large swarm as "Austrians." They were
284

really Poles, supplemented by Dalmatians, Croatians, Sla-
vonians, Bosnians, Herzegovinians. In such numbers they
came, year by year, that in 1910 the census-takers recorded an
increase of more than 120,000 of these "Austrians" in Chicago.
In addition, 24,000 were credited to Hungary.

There were nearly 130,000 Russians who arrived in that
decade, the vast majority of them, of course, being Poles or
Jews. The epic flight from the Czar's butchers was in full force.
Adventurous and money-hungry Italy sent over nearly 30,000
between 1900 and 1910. Five thousand Greeks joined the mi-
gration. The "Nordics" had by no means ceased to come; in-
deed the newly arrived Scandinavian peoples were almost as
numerous as the Italians, while those listed from Germany were
more than double the Greek population. Still, the current was
growing brunette, and had in it, too, the ebony streak of ne-
groes— 14,000 of them — whose movement from the South to
the North would, though hardly started yet, seem some day
more startling than any.

The city received these needy and babel-speaking thousands,
and put them somewhere. Its immigrant show-streets, Halsted
Street, Milwaukee Avenue, and others, became more prismatic
in coloring, more brilliant with scarfs, earrings, bracelets,
gypsy shawls, more entertaining in the display of Turkish
moustaches and Hebrew beards, more unintelligible with shop-
signs — one in Greek near the stockyards stretched over thirty-
five feet of store front — more exotic with coffee-houses, Hel-
lenic theaters, synagogues, cafes containing paintings of the
Danube or the Colosseum.

Besides this^ there came, into this great mixing-bowl of na-
tions, the mental inheritances of all those varieties of "queer"
people. Remote from the understanding of the American, there
existed in this or that foreign-speaking quarter historic hatreds,
customs, and points of view that shocked the Anglo-Saxon
when some pitiful outbreak brought them to light: the well-
known vendettas among the Latins ; the far less comprehended
revenges practiced by Balkan peoples ; the persistent belief of

285

some Europeans, confirmed by old-country practice, that every-
thing and everybody has a price; the mystic rituals and feuds
so jealously clung to by people of Romany blood or by Ori-
entals or by Mohammedans; the pitiable fears dogging the
Jew, his religious divisions, his instincts born of centuries of
Christian persecution. So far as Chicago was able to bring
harmony and a new type of patriotism among the wonderfully
intermingled species of humanity, it did wonders; and that the
process of "straightening them out" led to no greater tragedies
than the record contains is astonishing above all.

While Chicago was receiving the foreign-born to the number
of 195,797, it became also the home of nearly that many having
foreign parentage, the youngest generation of "foreigners,"
born with a homesickness they could not always define. In the
meantime the population of "native whites ; native parentage"
increased by only 90,760, out of a total gain in population of
486,708. The grand total of population was, in 1910,
2,185,283.

The giant city was renewing its blood-vessels with a tre-
mendous and terrifying speed. Its surges of feeling, its
quarrels, its efforts, were those of an organism renewed every
day, instead of in the legendary seven years.

Symptomatic also of the changing times was the passing of
many of the human landmarks of the city's middle period, when
commercial foundations were laid, social lines drawn, mighty
things accomplished. The Titans who grew to greatness in the
570s or '80s were now old. Their passing from year to year
taught a younger > hastier generation what they had done ; it
reminded elders of decades the mettiory of which stirred a thrill.

George M. Pullman died in 1897, only three years after the

labor strife which so upset Chicago. At the time of his death

the "model town," absorbed within the city proper, had been,

and continued to be, in transition from an independent domain

286

into one subject to the city ordinances. A State Supreme Court
decision finally forced the Pullman Company to give up all
municipal functions. So passed the car-builder's dream. In his
will he left more than $1,000,000 to found a manual-training
school in Pullman for the sons of poor men.

In 1901 died Philip D. Armour. Legends of his early rising,
his seven o'clock appearances at his stockyards office, his crisp
lectures to young employees, were to persist for many years.
His chief legacy to the city, besides his contribution to its fame
as a packing-center, was the Armour Institute, school of en-
gineering and manual arts. This, following the generous en-
dowment, he continued to support with keen interest as well as
funds after it opened in 1893, and as long as he lived. The huge
fortune and business passed into the hands of his son, J. Ogden
Armour, half executive and half dreamer; and in a quarter-
century the towering treasure, more than doubled by the son,
was to pour into different hands, although the company itself
managed to remain the chief rival of that other packing-
colossus, Swift and Company.

The rugged founder of the latter, Gustavus F. Swift, sur-
vived his chief competitor only two years. The faith they had
shared in Chicago as the great meat-distributing center had
been tremendously justified.

Mr. Swift had become absorbed in business to the exclusion
of nearly all else, save his family and his church. It was he who
early discerned the value of developing by-products. He was
"so identified with the business," writes Dr. Thomas W. Good-
speed — to whom as early as 1890 Mr. Swift gave money for
the University of Chicago — "that it is difficult to differentiate
between the two. Mr. Swift originated the business, made it,
worked out its marvelous success, and dominated it to the end
of his life." He was of a dominating type, and a man of monu-
mental grit. During the '93 panic, as his son Louis has written
in The Yankee of the Yards, for the whole summer he "drove
along the edge of a cliff. . . . Sometimes he had one wheel
part way over. . . . How he ran along tranquilly getting the

287

money somehow on the day he had to have it and meeting
every obligation on the dot, is one of the wonder-points in
business history."

One day, as this son relates, the ticker at the Board of Trade
stated that Swift and Company had failed. Soon there ap-
peared on the floor a six-foot, bearded figure few had ever seen
there. Writes the son:

"He strode in the door, walked to a table, and rapped on it
with that hard, heavy fist of his. Every one looked up except a
few traders off in a corner, so he called, 'Attention! Atten-

tion!'"

Then, says the account, he raised his voice, calling out: ^
"It is reported that Swift and Company has failed. Swift

and Company has not failed. Swift and Company cannot fail."
And out he walked.

Pullman, Armour, Swift gone — and Potter Palmer also. The
two packers were comparatively late-comers to Chicago, the
others pioneers.

Mr. Palmer was of the 1852 group, year of the first rail-
road connection with the East. From the East he came to open
a dry-goods store, which of course stood in the Lake Street
business district. He was an innovator, too, a contributor to
the Chicago tradition that there is no such thing as tradition.
He permitted exchanges of goods, if customers were dissatis-
fied; he allowed purchases to be taken home and examined.
Competitors raised their eyebrows, but the system worked, and
was copied abroad.

Tiring temporarily of business, Mr. Palmer in the late '60s
formed his famous connection with Marshall Field and Levi
Leiter, keeping a partnership-interest but putting the man-
agement up to the others. The business prospered. Mr. Palmer
traveled. Returning refreshed, he gave up store-keeping en-
tirely and undertook a bigger scheme, no less than educating
Chicago to a new shopping district. It was State Street. Along
288

that thoroughfare, now a canyon of stores, there straggled in
those days, just before the Great Fire, rows of cheap wooden
buildings, like stumps of teeth with cavities between. Mr.
Palmer bought a whole mile along the east side of the street.
It was a "plunge.55 The timid who deprecate every bold ven-
ture wagged their heads. But by this move Mr. Palmer ac-
quired real-estate titles of tremendous value. He went on back-
ing his faith ; caused State Street to be widened twenty feet ;
had the building line set farther back. Then he erected a new
store-building at Washington Street, and to his former part-
ners, Field and Leiter, he leased it for the then unparalleled
sum of $50,000 a year. He built also the first of three Palmer
Houses, which have stood successively on the same corner.

These activities were before the Great Fire. When it broke
out Mr. Palmer was in the East, his wife at home. He wired
reassuringly to her, rushed home, and toiled at rehabilitation.
The second Palmer House, famed everywhere for its steaks,
its negroes, the silver dollars set in the floor of its barber-shop,
went up. And then the merchant-realtor, vigorous at fifty,
looked northward, perceived the possible values along the lake
shore over the river, acquired large holdings and turned the
marshy area into good land, erecting finally the "mansion**
whose tower and conservatory for many years thrilled Chica-
goans5 and of whose treasures they heard marvelous tales. At
last, within a year or two, the brownstone palace is to be razed.

Mr. Palmer died in May, 1902. In the great drawing-room
his body lay in state. People in a long procession, just as
though he had been mayor, passed the coffin, glanced at the
shrewd, refined face. In the line were a dozen negroes of the
Palmer House personnel. And they wept.

Another well-known citizen lost his life the next month. He
was Blind Billy Kent, alderman of the Fourth Ward, gang-
politician and greedy Council member. He died horribly in a

289

fire which destroyed a sanitarium where, it is said, he was under
treatment for alcoholism. The blaze reached him while he was
in a strait- jacket, and he could not escape. As many people
as attended any of the funerals of the commercial princes
crowded to his home to mourn Blind Billy. A priest declared
that "no man had labored more for the poor and lowly.55

The homage paid to Potter Palmer, the grief over the shock-
ing death of a blind politician, wicked, but kind to his own —
both were profoundly Chicagoesque.

Returning to the roster of the "upper class" idols who passed
from the stage in those years, we arrive at the demise of the
merchant of merchants, the grave, formidable, supremely able
citizen who had passed fifty years of his life in this rude city
and never acquired its rudeness — Marshall Field.

Chicago remembered little of his early career — of his modest
and efficient clerking for the Christian storekeeper, John V.
Farwell ; of his $400 a year salary, his pallet in the store ; of
his rise to partnership in the Farwell firm, and then his con-
nection with Palmer and Leiter; of his indomitable work in
saving the stock of his store during the Great Fire. There were
not so many in the constantly recruited swarm of 1906 who
remembered the fire itself. Chicago of the later day knew Mr,
Field as a half -legendary figure whose portrait — white hair
and moustache, keen, proud face — semi-occasionally appeared
on some page ; Chicago's greatest millionaire, its Big Business
incarnate.

They heard stories of his managerial period ; they quoted his
alleged motto, "The customer is always right." Perhaps he
never said it in those words. Dr. T. W. Goodspeed has this
version : "He would never allow a clerk to get into a dispute
with a customer. If he ever saw anything of the sort, the clerk
would feel a gentle pull on his coat-tail and, turning, would
hear Mr. Field saying to him, 'Settle it as the lady wishes.5 "
290

Scarcely ever did the Chicago multitudes see him. He beat,
a path from his Prairie Avenue residence to his retail store, and
thence to his office in the handsome wholesale-building, designed
by H. EL Richardson. Generally he walked, followed (before
the days of motors) by his carriage and coachman, who per-
haps had set him down a few blocks from home. To draw up
at his store behind high-stepping horses seemed to him osten-
tatious. He would remain closely at work until lunch-time, then
he would join, at the exclusive old Chicago Club, the tableful
of wealthy friends, including for a long time P. D. Armour,
George M. Pullman, N. K. Fairbank, perhaps Robert Lincoln,
and generally John G. Shedd, who succeeded him as president
of the firm. At four o'clock he ended the day's work. When golf
became the sport of his kind, he played it — at "about a hun-
dred," it is said.

In earlier life he had interested himself in efforts such as
the Chicago Relief and Aid Society, the Young Men's Christian
Association — of which his employer, Mr. Farwell, was a great
supporter — the Historical Society, the Art Institute, the Civic
Federation. As years went by "the business" swallowed him
more and more. But in 1889 came a revival of his benevolence,
kindled, it would appear, by Dr. Goodspeed. The latter, coaxer
of money for the university, wanted those ten acres on the
Midway Plaisance which Mr. Field owned.

The merchant said that such a present could not be counted
as part of the $400,000 which John D. RockefeUer had asked
the Baptists to raise. Dr. Goodspeed and his associate, Fred*
erick T. Gates, agreed, and on that condition Mr. Field gave
the land.

The ice thus broken, it was easier for President Harper, In
1892, to obtain $100,000 from Mr. Field provided $900,000
more be subscribed. The period mentioned to him was a hun-
dred days. Thinking of notes of hand, perhaps, the merchant
proposed ninety days. The $900,000 was raised and Mr. Field
gave the $100,000.

"For the first time," relates Dr. Goodspeed, "he had made

291

large gifts to a great public enterprise. He had begun to learn
how to give."

He gave the university two blocks for an athletic field. He
turned over $50,000 worth of land to the Chicago Home for
Incurables. And in 1893 came from him the $1,000,000 which
inaugurated the renowned museum whose marble now glistens
on the lake-front. This million was not separated from him
without an effort. It took repeated persuasions from J. W.
Ellsworth, Edward E. Ayer, collector extraordinary, and
others, to "sell the idea." But once that was accomplished, the
merchant backed the museum handsomely, and in his famous
will, bequeathed it $8,000,000. Dr. Goodspeed states that it was
his intention to revise his will, doubling that bequest. But death
prevented execution of this benevolence, the fruit of a belated
impulse.

f The great tragedies in the Field family almost coincided in
that winter of 1905-06. Late in November, Marshall, Jr., the
thirty-seven-year-old son, suffered a serious bullet-wound. It
was made public in detail that he received it at his home from
his own revolver while preparing for a hunting-trip. An "agin-
everything" newspaper some time later gave voice to a rumor
that the accident had taken place not at Mr. Field's home, but
in a far different place. Cynical Chicago has continued to
believe something of the sort; orthodox Chicago has accepted
the statements of noted physicians, of the family, and of busi-
ness associates, that Mr. Field was in his own room when the
bullet pierced his body. At all events, after lingering a few
days, he died. Scarcely six weeks later his father, lately married
to his second wife, Mrs. Arthur Caton, succumbed to pneu-
monia in New York City.

The bulk of the vast fortune, probably more than $120,-
000,000, then went into trust for the two grandsons, of
whom only Marshall III survives. Of that will, its provision
for extending accumulations for years, its alleged inconsistency
with American institutions, which led to the passage of a new
law by the Illinois Legislature, enough has already been
292

written. In due time the grandson of the Marshall Field who
fctarted work in Chicago for $400 a year will be one of the
wealthiest men in the country. And people say — watching sev-
eral blocks of low-priced apartment buildings rise amid north-
side gloom, a "housing experiment" on a large scale — that the
grandson has vision.

In the very same month (January, 1906) that saw the death
of Marshall Field, Sr., President Harper succumbed to a battle
of about a year with cancer.

When average Chicago thought about him, it may have been
tempted to classify him with magnates like Armour and Field,
rather than to think of him as the interpreter of the Book of
Job. They had heard so much about his negotiations with
Rockefeller and other millionaires ; they had seen his new build-
ings go up so swiftly and haughtily. Very likely they thought
of him as much older than he was — for he was not of the
pioneer group. At his death he was forty-nine years and six
months old.

Dr. Harper was of a very complex nature, and in the
struggle between the components of it there came about an
almost tragic defeat of the research-scholar by the adminis-
trator and money-raiser. There are many friends of his still
living who assert that he never ceased to mourn the practical
shelving of his Old Testament studies in favor of the immense
and partly materialistic task of creating a university from the
first stone upward. Yet he had the compensatory thrill of seeing
his conceptions of the '80s not only well established, but evi-
dently moving toward fulfillment, before the '90s were ended.

He first entered Chicago affairs in 1879, as a twenty-two-
year-old instructor of Hebrew in the Baptist Theological Semi-
nary at Morgan Park. Well he deserved the often misapplied
term "prodigy." He had been graduated from a little Ohio
college — Muskingum — at the age of fourteen. Having been
one of a small group studying Hebrew, he was chosen to make

293

a graduation oration in that language. Nevertheless, he was a
"regular boy," who pranked about the village and led a local
brass band through its streets, wearing his hat cocked back on
his head and blowing an E-flat cornet with gusto. But he was
a student! Giving up clerkship in his father's small store, he
went to Yale for graduate study, and won his Ph.D. when
eighteen. A year later he became principal of Masonic College,
with some seventy-five pupils, in the hamlet of Macon, Ten-
nessee. Also, at nineteen, he became a husband.

Nest came Denison University, the seminary at Morgan
Park, Chautauqua, a Yale professorship, and finally the op-
portunity— over which he hesitated for some time — of heading
the new Baptist educational venture at Chicago. He hesitated,
for one thing, because his heart was set upon a great uni-
versity, while others interested were ambitious only for a col-
lege. In the end the decision came about as he wished. He then
schemed a university so vast that, in order to keep in any
sort of step with his mental operations, tons of money had to
be poured into the enterprise on top of the original tons.
Without counting the cost, he engaged professors of great
note_Von Hoist, Michelson, Chamberlin, Small, Laughlin,
Jacques Loeb, Judson, and others — and started off his uni-
versity with a faculty of one hundred and twenty! He hired
gtagg, and for the first time gave an athletic coach faculty-
rank. Furthermore, the year before the opening, he got the
trustees to pay the top men $7,000 a year.

His famous innovations, which stood the educational world
on its head, included four; the Summer quarter, university ex-
tension— then comprising both public lectures and the cor-
respondence school — the University Press, and affiliations of
smaller institutions with the university. Very few of these has
the university been forced to discontinue. Instead, other like
institutions have copied the greater part of them. In his tre-
mendous zeal and with his limitless ideas, however, Harper
tended to exceed budgets and count upon more than he could
get. The result was that about two years before he died a con-
294

f erence was held in New York which called a halt upon deficits.
"No new departments, no enlargements, without money in
hand,55 was the substance of the memorandum adopted. At the
same time, Mr. Rockefeller's annual millions for endowment
stopped, and his gifts were not renewed until after the defi-
cits had begun to decrease.

Chicago, with all its tremendous toilers, hardly had such
another demon for work as Dr. Harper. He taught, wrote,
guided, journeyed, promoted, and sought always for more
things to do. He never lost sight of the fact that his university
was literally a part of the city of Chicago ; he belonged to its
organizations, such as the Civic Federation; in 1897 he headed
a commission which revised the public-school system, furnish-
ing a plan which, despite politics, became partly effective. With
all this the overshrewd Chicagoans were inclined to think of
Harper as sitting on a chill eminence, even when they did not
think of him as a gatherer of "oil money." Nothing could have
been more unfair.

Still one more Titan entered the shades in the Winter of
1905-1906 : he who is said to have been the titular figure in a
Dreiser novel.

In a strictly edited newspaper obituary, such as burst into
print by the column the last days of December, 1905, the career
and death of Charles T« Yerkes seem scarcely less empurpled
than in the romance.

Chicago had waved him farewell. In 1899 he had disposed
of his traction-properties to the Elkins-Widsner group. Leav-
ing the city after a dramatic adieu to an assemblage of street-
car workers, many of whom had known his mastery for fifteen
years, he had taken up residence in Slew York and London.
The British city received him with especial warmth, as he was
clearly competent to cope with the tube system, and no reason
was known why the highest society should not receive him and
his wife — his second. Writers about the great world whose

295

accuracy need not be disputed now told how Mr. Yerkes was
feted by nobility, even by royalty. Yet as the end approached,
the experienced and fortunate couple were utterly estranged.
He lived in hotels; she in the great house in Fifth Avenue,
adorned with conservatories and filled with choice and indubi-
tably genuine paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens, Hals, Corot,
Reynolds, Botticelli, Greuze, and all the great — a collection
begun in Chicago and augmented as the fortune piled up. A
holy carpet from Mecca was among the unusual items in that
museum behind whose doors Mrs. Yerkes seldom cared to go.

Mr. Yerkes grew ill and died, unreconciled with his family.
Immediately New York and Chicago papers burst out with the
great "human-interest" story of that time, the account of Mr.
Yerkes5 friendship for a Mrs. Sue Grigsby, woman of high-
colored career, and for her daughter Emilie. It was told how
the great plunger and connoisseur built a splendid Park Ave-
nue house whose ownership stood in Emilie's name. It was told
that the friendship, or infatuation, caused the quarrel which
made Mrs. Yerkes live alone, and which also alienated son from
father. It was insinuated . . .

But the story strays away from Chicago.

With an effect that cannot well be calculated, the legends,
noble and libelous, inspiring or degrading, crowding about the
names of the departing Titans, entered into the mentality of
Chicago, into its credos and even its political shibboleths. The
newly acclimated foreigners, the schools of new fish leaping
through the city's sluice-ways, the eager country folk coming
there to live, and excited by all they heard, became alert mem-
bers of a civilization of gossip. The theory that the packers
formed a blighting trust, that there was a literal Four Hundred
run by Mrs. Palmer, that the Marshall Field will was an
insult to the poor men, that Rockefeller was trying to dominate
education, that Wall Street wanted to own Chicago, that the
296

Catholic Church wanted to run it, that the great department-
stores owned the City Council— these and a hundred other
dark tales traveled from mouth to mouth. Nor were they recited
by ignorant folk alone.

The way was thus prepared, in the early 1900s? for more
years of turbulence ; and there could be traced back to that time
many a dementia which was still vigorous in 1928-1929, per-
haps the most violent transition period of all.

297

CHAPTER XI

1 HBOTJGH barrages of dissent, over barbed-wire fences of
cynicism, and against clouds of stupidity, tie people who
wanted Chicago a better city pushed on, with flags (of many
different kinds) bravely flying.

With many of them it was a conviction, in the Spring of
1905, that to follow the mayoralty banner of a genial, emo-
tional, and studious candidate named Edward P. Dunne
would assure victory. Harrison had sat on the powder-maga-
zine for eight years, four terms, and was grown weary. He was
willing to let this judge, with his idealisms, try being mayor.
The plan, however, was repugnant to many leading citizens,
including not only those who were conservative about the city's
problems, but to some of the more "regular" reformers as well.
Judge Dunne alarmed them. He was a bold advocate of a
program called Immediate Municipal Ownership. A lot of
queer people, who were overacademic even when they did not
make violent speeches, were back of the judge; so argued
leading citizens and editors. They and the Republican party
put forward John Maynard Harlan, whose vigorous but vain
battle for the mayoralty in 1897 was still vividly recalled.

The campaign of 1905 was an amazing conflict of words.
It could only have been more explosive, verbally, if Lorimer

had been active in it, but Lorimer, at that time, was otherwise
engaged, brooding and plotting, perhaps looking forward
even as far as the senatorship. Dunne and Harlan stumped up
and down the city, hurling at surprised and blinking audiences
of voters references to J. Pierpont Morgan, President Roose-
velt, William Randolph Hearst, Hinky Dink Kenna. The
Democrats pulled in Morgan because of that sale Mr. Yerkes
had made to Wall Street. Joseph Medill Patterson, twenty-six-
year-old grandson of the celebrated publisher and mayor, took
the stump and denounced Morgan's absentee landlordism. Mr.
Harlan, in his best form, predicted control of Mr. Dunne — if
elected — by Hearst, whom he stigmatized, in ward meetings
and in the gilt-arched auditorium, as the "Daily Assassin."
Judge Dunne made a passing reference to the fact that Kenna
was seeking reelection, and gave him a party indorsement ; the
enemy took this up with glee and raked in everything that was
true, and other stuff as well, about the little saloon-man and his
friends.

William Kent, young and wealthy civic fighter whose rhet-
oric was fiery and went clear around a subject as well as into
it, delivered one speech that must have echoed strangely in the
East. Declaring that the local battle was only a phase of the
popular struggle for opportunity described by Roosevelt as
the square deal, he went on to say:

"New York is today the center of things most despicable.
It is the home of extravagance, the birthplace of the monkey
dinner [Harry Lehr's feast at which, rumor said, a monkey
was a guest]. A few Chicago people try to follow the lead, but
Chicago cares more for race-horses, more for the fat stock-
show exhibits, than for swelldom on exhibit at a horse-show,
. . . We have not surrendered our democracy in Chicago. . . .
Things are tending toward righteousness."

Governor Deneen came up from Springfield, and in his bal-
anced prose argued for Harlan. The latter was backed by his
friends as "champion of the people in the bad old days" (of
1897).

299

Dunne was backed as the man who would retire from power
all those linked with "malefactors of great wealth," and who
would see that the traction-companies — in whose stock, he
declared, Morgan had invested $25,000,000— got no more than
their due. Harlan said Dunne desired to pay the owners of
obsolete car-lines millions and millions of dollars. Dunne
said Harlan said

With the irrelevance of events in a large city, the spiritual
music of Parsifal was being sung in a darkened Auditorium
at the very time when, in smoke-filled campaign halls, epithets
and insults brought howls of joy, and ribald processions filled
the streets. Heinrich Conried's production, just as in Baireuth,
was on the stage. Black-bearded Alfred Hertz conducted;
Nordica, Burgstaller, and Van Rooy were in the cast. It was
a performance, just as in Europe, of the entire score, with an
intermission for dinner; and this put society in a flurry over
whether to wear sack-coat, tuxedo or claw-hammer, "high neck"
or evening gown. Devout Wagnerites hissed down applause
upon Nordica's entrance. The Grail-scene music strove to
escape into the city flaming with party strife.

Election day arrived in the first week of April. The Harlan
newspapers considered his election assured by 20,000 to
25,000 plurality. However, it was Dunne who received the
25,000 plurality, or close to it. He telegraphed to Judge
Tuley, the universally revered jurist who had supported him
through thick and thin: "General Nogi begs to report the
fall of the Wall Street Port Arthur."

This metaphor, it may be necessary to explain, was derived
from the fact that the Russian empire was at that time being
soundly whipped by the armies and navies of the Japanese.

The Dunne administration was filled with excitements and
tjuaintnesses largely beyond the scope of this narrative. Of ex-
citements, among the first was a terrific strike of teamsters'
300

unions, led by a ruthless, fire-eating newcomer in Chicago,
"Con" Shea. There had been previous "teameo" rebellions, not-
ably a wild-west affair in 1903; but this outbreak of the 1905
Summer, bringing murders, assaults on police, a city half-
terrorized, was the worst of all. It ran for months, a boisterous
welcome to a new mayor.

Quaintnesses in the city government were inevitable and nu-
merous, since in the Mayor's following were characters "who
fitted oddly into officialdom. With him on the ticket was Adrian
C. Anson, Old Anse himself, who upon finding himself elected
city clerk, exclaimed, "I'm just as pleased as if I'd won another
pennant." Florid, amiable Anson added little to the drama
of the Dunne regime. That could not be said of "Joe" Patter-
son, who was appointed commissioner of public works. He was
in those days a spitfire who could go so far as to call great cor-
porations anarchists, and accuse them of stealing water. He
even proposed to cure the stockyards smell !

Peter Bartzen, a hearty and headstrong German, was made
building-commissioner. He saw his duty plain. Besides a house-
cleaning of his department, he undertook to discipline the State
Street barons. Shoppers arriving at the Marshall Field store
at nine o'clock on a summer morning found the doors closed
and a sign to the effect that the building-department had closed
them* Police on guard grinned ; clerks within dawdled and won-
dered. Mr. Bartzen had, he said, discovered some technical
violations of the ordinances ; he had warned aU the stores ; he
must make an example of somebody — why not of the most
powerful?

The "discipline," word of which sped about the Loop and
caused huge amazement and laughter, lasted an hour and a
half. At ten-thirty the Mayor found it best to overrule his
Bartzen and raise the siege. Meanwhile, the young blond vice-
president of Field's, James Simpson, was placed under arrest.

"I suppose," said Mr. Simpson, blushing through his tan
as he signed his bond, "I suppose I'm a real American citizen
now that I've been arrested by the majesty of the law."

301

Mayor Dunne did not appoint people with the idea of giving
vaudeville. There was doubtless truth in the comment written
by Jane Addams some years later that his administration "was
founded upon the belief that if those citizens representing
social ideals and reform principles were but appointed to office,
public welfare must be established." He took advice from
people of such principles. His eyes roved abroad, and he sent
for James Dalrymple, manager of the Glasgow car-lines, to
come and tell Chicago how to have municipal operation. Mr.
Dalrymple came, but partly owing to the ridicule voiced by
opposition newspapers, his visit was not a success. The trac-
tion-argument only grew worse.

In the meantime the Mayor, pursuing his policy of appoint-
ments, named a Board of Education composed largely of
persons representing social ideals ; such peace-loving idealists
as Miss Addams and Raymond Robins, and argumentative
ones like Dr. Cornelia De Bey. Chicago's school-boards always
have been weirdly composed, owing to the ill-devised statutes
making the positions subject to City Hall choice. The history
of the schools has been a varied and turbulent one, with high
levels such as the benign administration of Superintendent
Albert G. Lane in the '90s, the fight of Dr. W. S. Christopher
for medical inspection, the scientific proposals introduced by
the W. R. Harper commission at the invitation of Mayor Har-
rison ; and low levels such as the rotten scandals and shrieking
comedies two decades later, in Thompson's time. It is a history
as intricate as a study of European genealogy. For its later
phases readers had best consult the recent book by Professor
George S. Counts entitled School and Society in Chicago,

The Dunne school-trustees strove honestly but without much
chance of doing powerful constructive work. They represented,
Miss Addams wrote, "no concerted policy of any kind, but
were for the most part adherents to the new education/' They
were suspected of being overpartisan toward the Teacher's
Federation, militant labor-union which had grown dangerous
through forcing corporations to pay millions more in taxes
302

than these corporations cared to pay. The teachers had helped
Judge Dunne to election partly because he had decided in their
favor a sweeping suit over salaries ; as mayor he had appointed
friends of theirs, and these friends voted to withdraw from
appeal, where the previous board had put it, that same salary-
suit.

All was fuel to the fire of conflict between radicals and con-
servatives in Chicago of 1905-07 ; a conflict waged over educa-
tion, over transportation, over gas prices and telephone tolls.

The Dunne administration did not gain in popular favor as
time went on. It had too many weak heads. John Burns, the
British laborite, came for a visit. He was asked; "What do

you think of ?" naming a city official. With his Scottish

burr, Burns replied:

"He's an ass."

"But sincere, don't you think?"

"So are all asses," blurted he.

But these matters are really parenthetical. The cause of re-
form went marching on. It did not get far by means of attacks
on Mayor Dunne because he would not close the saloons on
Sunday ; nor did it accomplish much by exposes of police negli-
gence and graft, in reply to which charges the Mayor claimed,
toward the middle of his term, that he had a wonderful police
chief and that he had "driven graft from the City Hall." With
or without harmony or perfect good sense, there were improve-
ments in store. And several of those from which the most was
hoped had to do with the courts.

The first, arising from emotional Chicago's warm sympathy
for unfortunate children, had begun several years before.
Nine-year-old Steve Grubuvich stood before a judge, on a July
morning in 1899, and sobbed. The Hon, R. S. Tuthill, chin-
bearded and kind, drew Steve to him, murmured to him, ques-
tioned him. Steve would not stop crying. He was just a panic-

303

stricken urchin, whose guardian, standing there, said that he
threw stones at neighbors' horses, set fire to a barn, and traded
his (the guardian's) watch for candy, "and whipping does no

good."

Steve, expecting a fresh whipping or possibly a jail cell such
as he had heard about, kept on whimpering. But he was not to
be punished in such fashion. Although he did not know it, the
nine-year-old Grubuvich was a pioneer. He was the first case in
Chicago's Juvenile Court, which itself stood up in the ranks
of pioneers.

Prior to that year, before a Legislature acted upon the
appeals of child-lovers, boy and girl offenders had been
dragged before the same tribunals, and locked in the same un-
speakable hoosegows, as grown men and women. How many
thousands of them, through the years ! In the six months prior
to 1899, there had been 33% boys aged from nine to sixteen
committed to the bridewell. And the bridewell was a desolate,
dirty hell-hole, in which was jammed a hideous mess of human
scum ; it was sometimes cruelly and as often heartlessly man-
aged; the boys went into cells with thieves, morons, and drunk-
ards. Hundreds more of them were packed into iron-barrel
lazarets in the county jail.

Chicago, as its intelligence grew, could not stand this. Espe-
cially its women — and most particularly that ancient and hon-
orable group, the Chicago Woman's Club, sponsor of a
county- jail school years before — could not stand it. So, in the
fullness of time, there came the Juvenile Court law, drawn
with great breadth by the writer of laws, Harvey B. Hurd. It
provided for the same disposition of delinquents, children who
went wrong, as of dependents, those who were simply out of
luck. And it had in it this great clause : "The care, custody, and
discipline of a child shall approximate as nearly as may be that
which should be given by its parents; and in all cases where
it can properly be done, the child is to be placed in an approved A
family-home and become a member of the family by legal adop-
tion or otherwise.5'
304

Another noble ideal, which for years could not be made prac-
tical. The law specified probation officers, but did not provide
for salaries. It pointed to detention in a decent place, but there
was no such place ; at least, none better than the John Worthy
School at the bridewell, which had been a great advance over
the neglect of truants and "bad children" in an earlier period.

For a time a Hull House worker, Mrs. Alzina Stevens, car-
ried on alone. She had been a worker in a New England cotton-
mill at the age of thirteen, had seen childhood at its unhappiest
(and lost a finger from her own hand) ; coining to Chicago
and Hull House, she had haunted police stations and often
coaxed the police into giving her the parole of a boy or girl
accused of petty offenses. The kids, especially those of foreign
families knowing nothing of ordinances or statutes, were con-
tinually "pinched" for picking up coal, for purloining junk,
for breaking into empty houses, or for begging. Mrs. Stevens
became their "mother" and then the first regular probation
officer. Her salary was paid by subscriptions of a citizens' com-
mittee, which as time went on increased their gifts until there
was a corps of six, then a dozen, then a score. The effort had
reached this stage in the hurly-burly days of 1905-1906.

Despite all, the friends of the Juvenile Court, most promi-
nent of whom at this time was Mrs. Lucy L. Flower, got the
lawmakers to provide an appropriation for the salaries. After
this, by a still more prodigious effort, they brought about the
authorization and building of a Juvenile Detention Home,
which was opened in 1907. No longer were children haled to
court in the dingy County Building, or detained in the barn
which was the first place of surveillance. They now had a neat
little court-room, never crowded, more like an office; they had
sunlight, games, pleasant work, to occupy them. During ten
years the cases of more than 31,000 were disposed of under the
new system; and there was formed also to study and help the
unfortunate child, the Juvenile Protection Association, in
which that benevolent lady of wealth, Mrs. Joseph T. Bowen,
was the dominant spirit. Still later came a medical clinic and a

305

Psychopathic Institute, whose studies of the errant and abnor-
mal child have become renowned.

It is a temptation to dwell for many more pages on that
immense change for the better, the Juvenile Court and the care
of Chicago's children generally; but there came another over-
turn in those years which demands attention.

The whole city court-system was rotten. For more decades
than seems possible, Chicago, the energetic, Chicago, the inno-
vator, had borne with a legal structure antedating its founding
by no less than centuries — the ancient and monarchical insti-
tution of justice of the peace and constables. There were
"J JVs," even in Chicago of the '90s and 1900s, who conducted
their courts with a fair display of sense and legality; but there
was also an egregious amount of laziness, stupidity, graft, and
political pull that made the courts as a whole a menace even
to the innocent.

The J.P.'s were appointed by the Circuit Court judges. The
constables, who became perhaps the worst disgrace of all, were
elected. There were long lists of them presented to the voters.
In the confusion tough candidates sneaked to victory oftener
than good ones. A powerful, dangerous lot they became, even-
tually, these constables, some of them sluggers, blackmailers,
and gunmen — very useful to politicians and even, at times, to
certain business men. The most conspicuous, for some years,
was one Louis Greenberg, a furtive genius, with somewhat the
look of an old-clo' man. He took with him on some errands a
couple of giant strong-arm men, who were efficient in evic-
tions and the like.

Other constables were muscular themselves. The giants would

pound a protesting husband into unconsciousness while the

furniture was being moved out. Also, it was said, these legalized

ruffians were useful to corporations who desired to ruin rival

306

corporations. It was such influence, it is said, that for many
years saved one constable from loss of his post.

There were justices ready to grant judgments on perjured
testimony, or to issue warrants for anybody the politicians
wanted punished. In the police courts sat magistrates, ap-
pointed by the mayor at the instance of the most powerful
aldermen. Through ownership of a magistrate, an alderman
could run his ward like a despot, even giving a rebellious
precinct-leader the alternative of surrender or a month in the
bridewell.

Then, too, the financial side of those courts was worth some-
thing. If things got slow, it could be arranged that the police
should raid a disorderly house, and bring in, around midnight,
two or three wagon-loads of women. The bail-bonds would be
all ready. They cost plenty, too. And the prisoners could be
held for ransom as long as advisable, or until the long-suffering
owner of the resort paid fines or "fixed it up" with the alder-
man. Meantime the police stole all they could from the women.
Such events were profitable to many, and not least to bond-
sharks such as one Andy Craig, political saloonkeeper and
power in the Levee.

Almost anybody could get even with somebody else by
"framing" a case in a justice court. If it was not convenient
to do this in town, the bewildered defendant would be ordered
to appear in a suburban court, where his case would be set for
an hour just before the arrival of the first train from the city.
Either he could stay out there all night, or he could expect to
find a judgment entered, his home invaded, his furniture and
even his jewelry seized.

Something "had to be done." So citizen grumblings and
newspaper exposes were followed slowly by the formation of
committees and by serious study on the part of lawyers. Reve-
lations of crooked work in two offices of court clerks proved
good for the cause, while correspondingly injurious to Boss
Lorimer. Business men, hit several ways by mix-up of records
and thefts of fees, got behind the new plan, which contemplated

307

a municipal court that would not only replace the J.P.'s, but
deal with minor crimes, and with civil cases of more than
petty importance.

Upon this there emerged an attorney of long Chicago and
Illinois experience named Hiram T. Gilbert. He drew the
needed law and saw it through the legislature. The politicians
had taken great alarm, but when they discovered that in addi-
tion to twenty-seven judges and a chief justice, all elective,
there would be a clerk and a bailiff, also elective, the bosses felt
better. There would be hundreds of new jobs to play with.
Lacking in the brass bands and gavel-tricks of some furious
legislative work on Chicago's behalf, the campaign for the new
court went through to success- Then when it came time to gain
the approval of Chicago voters, the strong pleas made, and the
memory of justice-court abuses, brought a heavy affirmative
vote. Greenberg's notoriety alone, according to one authority,
brought thousands of crosses to the "Yes" column.

The court, as finally set up, was a new thing in the United
States. It was to deal with civil actions involving $1,000 or
less ; all infractions of city ordinances, and, at first, all crimes
calling for fines or for imprisonment, except in the peniten-
tiary. (The last-named jurisdiction was later found unconsti-
tutional, and criminal cases had to be sent to the grand jury.)
A greater innovation, however, was the power given to the
chief justice. He was king not only over the associate judges,
but over the clerk and bailiff. He was sworn to direct the as-
signment of cases and to be the court of last resort in all other
functions. His became a conspicuous and difficult post, one
commanding as much authority as that of the State's attorney
or district attorney — if not more.

The choice fell upon Harry Olson, who had for ten years
handled, or helped to handle, a procession of difficult, sensa-
tional cases in the Criminal Court ; an assistant under State's
Attorneys Kearns and Deneen; a fighter and a student of
criminology. In the first election for the new court he defeated
Attorney Gilbert, father of the law, and took command.
308

The Chicago Municipal Court thus entered upon a career
that was bound to be uneven in effectiveness, thanks to all those
jobs being hurled into the political pot; yet a much-admired
innovation. Other cities studied it, and as they watched, re-
organized their own judiciaries with Chicago as a model. Be-
cause of his study of the criminal — and of the "expert" who
unscientifically diagnosed the criminal — Chief Justice Olson
evolved the determination to apply psychological principles to
cases within the court's jurisdiction. From this arose a psycho-
pathic laboratory, under Dr. W. J. Hickson,

In an entirely different field, another big "clean-up" began
in 1906. It was going on in the cattle-pens and slaughter-
houses. The popular, but mistaken, idea has been that it started
with Sinclair's Jungle, a sort of novel and indictment com-
bined, picturing dire conditions in the yards. At first de-
nounced as a lie and a socialistic lie at that, the book took
hold of the public imagination, went rolling across the country
gathering sentiment, and got into Congress. Soon a couple of
government investigators came quietly to Chicago, with the
encouragement of Roosevelt, and took back to Washington a
report which it is said was favorable. Perhaps it was, since the
best of the packers, with the coming of by-products manufac-
ture, had tried to do better. At all events, Roosevelt was not
satisfied. He sent out other investigators, who turned in a
document telling of bad sanitation, dark and crowded working-
places, rankly negligent meat-inspection, and other evils.
Roosevelt gleefully sent the report along to the lawmakers, and
in due time the Beveridge bill, aimed at remedying the defects,
went through. A great rebuilding and cleaning up struck the
yards. One visiting the plants now finds nothing for a Sinclair
to criticize ; he sees airy rooms, meats cleanly handled ; he walks
on brick floors instead of in mud and filth.

309

There were lots of things to be glad about as 1906 waned.
The old cable-cars went out of business. Overhead trolleys, only
a little while before denounced as a menace, became the thing,
and not a soul but rejoiced. Such crowds rode the first day
that it required police to control them. Flags flew from
windows.

The campaign was on for the Municipal Court candidates.
Some civic measures, long prepared, were to be voted for ; not-
ably the four-year term for mayor. The movement toward a
Chicago Beautiful was being discussed at banquets, and a
charming new idea, that of "forest preserves,55 was to be put up
to a puzzled electorate.

But it was very difficult, that October, to keep people's minds
on such subjects. One tremendous local warfare, stirring up
passions, whipping people to frenzy, parting families, pos-
sessed the city.

The Cubs and the White Sox had each won a national pen-
nant. They were clashing on the diamond for the championship
of the world. People chanted, "We have been IT, we are IT,
we will be IT." They sang, "Take me back to that great old
Chicago town." The lead-writers of the newspapers exploded
in adjectives, in stories beginning, "This, the capital of the
Inland Empire, is today the Mecca of the fanatic tribes," etc.,
etc.

Bands played, street-throngs swirled, fair ladies crowned the
heroes Doc White, Nick Altrock, Big Ed Walsh, Fielder Jones,
and their white-stockinged mates ; or else three-fingered Mor-
decai Brown, Johnny Kling, Evers, Tinker, the eagle-faced
Frank Chance, from the West Side. The Sox won four games,
the Cubs two. Total receipts were $106,550, considered im-
mense in those days. Convening the "hot-stove league," fans
voted that the "hitless wonders" had earned the bigger share.
And the old Roman, Comiskey, was very proud. But City Clerk
Pop Alison hung his head.
310

CHAPTER XII

JL LACED old Lake Michigan — placid in that it failed to share
the enthusiasms or conflicts of the thousands living on its
shores — rippled before the city during all these years, bring-
ing it ships, furnishing it water to drink, enticing it to pleasure.
It was the city's greatest asset, people said ; yet for a long time
they let it remain the privilege of a few. They allowed certain
parts of its shore to be used for ugly commercial buildings.
They permitted a railroad to parallel it.

A few years after the World's Fair, a gentleman said at a
banquet : "A very high purpose will be served if the lake shore
be restored to the people and made beautiful for them."

Continuing his speech, he grew lyrical and also prophetic:

"The lake has been singing to us many years, until we have
become responsive. We see the broad water, ruffled by the gentle
breeze; upon its breast the glint of oars, the gleam of rosy
sails, the outlines of swift-gliding launches. We see racing-
shells go by, urged onward by bronzed athletes. We hear the
rippling of the waves, commingled with youthful laughter, and
music swelling over the Lagoon dies away under the low
branches of the trees. A crescent moon swims in the western sky,
shining faintly upon us in the deepening twilight. „ . .

"And what sort of prosperity is this which we should foster

311

and maintain? Not that for rich people solely or principally,
for they can take care of themselves and wander where they will
in pursuit of happiness ; but the prosperity of those who must
have employment in order to live."

This prose poet was none other than Daniel H. Burnham,
and he was addressing men who might fairly be called "rich
people^_the Merchant's Club of Chicago. His outburst was an
early expression of the Burnham dream, which seems to have
been nurtured by that citizen who was always suggesting
things, J. W. Ellsworth. The desire, no doubt warmed by many
days of watching the lovely inland sea in its endless moods,
grew gradually into a "project." Through it all ran the great
impulse of the World's Fair.

The Merchant's Club, glad to have an objective, cherished
the project; talked of it from time to time. Then came the
Commercial Club, another body of men representing both
wealth and public spirit, with a proposition to Mr. Burnham,
presented by Franklin MacVeagh, to draw a plan. But by this
time Mr, Burnham had promised to draw one for the Mer-
chant's Club. Whatever rivalry might have been threatened
was ended by a merger of the two clubs in 1907 under the name
of the Commercial Club. Their combined strength and money
was easily adequate to launch properly even so vast a concep-
tion as Mr. Burnham now had — much more vast than the
development of the lake-front alone.

The years that went by, taking in different city administra-
tions, and starred for good or ill by many happenings, turned
the dream from a mere succession of speeches into an exhibit
of drawings, both beautifully painted pictures (by the famous
artist Jules Guerin) and careful diagrams, accompanied by the
necessary text. The Plan of Chicago became a book. It was
published by the Commercial Club in 1908. The president of
the club at that time was John V. Farwell (the younger).
The one hundred members subscribed $85,000 to start the
thing off.

How could the city ever make reality out of what was in
the book? If all those millionaires had given every penny they
had, they could not have paid for the improvements dreamed.
The task must evidently become a municipal affair. Clyde M.
Carr and others advocated this idea strongly. It presented diffi-
culties ; the chance of the plan being strangled by politics, the
equally strong possibility that the cantankerous voters might
not favor it. The City Hall must do its part. So that when,
in 1908-1909, the launching of the enterprise as an official
Chicago matter had become urgent, a great deal depended on
who ruled in the City Hall,

The man who ruled there was Fred A. Busse, aged forty -
three, the rugged, portly son of a German Civil War veteran.
He was at first sight coarse in appearance, with his big round
body and his face that expressed more vigor than refinement.
His speech was full of Chicago dialect, and his command of
grammar not half as complete as his command of men. Fred
Busse (hardly any one called him Mr.) had been elected mayor
in a close race which put an end to the regime of Judge Dunne ;
a curious race, too, because Busse had been painfully injured
in a railroad wreck and could make no speeches. He hated
speeches, anyway.

This rough-talking, quick-thinking stout man was born in
Chicago, not two miles from the City Hall. As a boy he roamed
the North Side ; he got into scrapes ; it was written of him later
that he had known, as friend or enemy, practically every other
boy on "the near North Side5* — not so difficult in the '80s.
When he was old enough, he started and built a coal-business.
He became well-to-do, but remained single and continued to
live in a few rooms, with his parents, over the coal-company's
office. He went into politics, got elected to the State Legisla-
ture, joined the Lorimer wing of the Republicans, became boss

313

of the Busse Wards, was appointed postmaster of Chicago by
President Roosevelt, and finally was nominated for mayor. He
continued to live in the flat over the coal-company's office.

Fred's companions in his younger days had not been of the
scholarly order, nor those pure in speech or of the Band of
Hope. He drank a good deal of beer in saloons, and there were
nocturnal exploits and practical jokes. An early acquaintance
was one Barney Bertsche, who was a clever hoodlum and lasted
even to join in the champion hoodlumism of the 1920s. Be-
friending of Bertsche was charged against Busse during the
campaign. Stories were told of his saloon-fights, — mostly mere
pranks. He was pictured sometimes as a bum, and sometimes
as a Lorimerite serpent. But at the same time, not only power-
ful business men but newspaper publishers realized that Busse
had executive ability and a grasp of city problems.

With his election, consequently, it was felt by important
groups that things looked distinctly better. The Dunne regime,
these people thought, had slumped into police misrule and
executive indecision. Busse would clean house. Moreover, his
election coincided with the presentation to the voters of the
most competent and far-reaching traction-program the city
had yet seen* Ordinances had been expertly drawn by Attorney
Walter L. Fisher, who had succeeded Clarence Darrow as
Dunne's special traction-counsel, and the companies had ac-
cepted them. They provided for twenty-year franchises, com-
pensation to the city of 55 per cent, of the companies5 net
profits, reconstruction and rehabilitation of the systems,
through routes, five-cent fares, $5,000,000 for subways, and
other benefits. A board of supervising engineers representing
the city was established. The city could purchase the lines at
any time, upon six months' notice.

This solution, as it seemed, of the traction-puzzle was passed
by the City Council, vetoed by Dunne, and passed over his
veto. In the campaign it was supported by Busse, and was
approved by the voters, Chicago's mood became more and more
cheerful. The Mayor, who had seized office in what the news-
314

papers called a coup, plunged ahead, demanding a flock of
resignations, shaking up the Health Department, the Smoke-
Prevention Bureau, pounding his desk before Chief of Police
Shippy and roaring, "Get the big thieves! I'll back every
honest copper." He shook up the Board of Education, got into
a long and violent litigation and lost most of it, received re-
porters and cracked jokes, and all the time seemed to be
thinking, "What can I do for this town?" The prohibitionists
reviled him because he would not close the saloons on Sunday.
An extension of the telephone franchises came to a head, amid
charges of graft, and Busse's approval of the ordinance ex-
posed him to cries of "In League with Big Business !"

He broke out occasionally with a "Go to hell!" and every
one enjoyed it. He attacked the city's financial snarls, with
Banker Walter H. Wilson as Comptroller. He kept on dodging
speeches.

In the middle of his term he very quietly married a young
woman named Lee, and when the "old gang" came to congratu-
late him, he blushed.

Here was vigorous human nature in the City Hall, and also,
it appeared, insight.

The Chicago Plan advocates were encouraged to take up
their pet project with the Mayor. And so it came about that
one of the least visionary, one of the least "highbrow," of all
Chicago's mayors became an instrument in realizing one of
the city's most idealistic and most splendid conceptions since
the World's Fair.

One can imagine Fred Busse sitting up nights with the elab-
orate book, The Plan of Chicago, amazed and perhaps puzzled
by the future paradise that it pictured. But there was no un-
certainty about the message he sent to the City Council in
November, 1909, accompanying his appointment of 353 citi-
zens who were to constitute the first Chicago Plan Commission.
The Mayor took the thing, as was his wont, practically. He

315

got a group of "lowbrow" aldermen together and said, "You'll
have to be for this some time; why not now?" In his message,
after referring to the labor which the fathers of the project had
given unselfishly as volunteers, he wrote:

"This plan is not to be considered as the embodiment of an
artist's dream or the project of theoretical city beautifiers who
have lost sight of everyday affairs and who have forgotten the
needs and interests of the mass of the people. On the contrary,
the men who have produced the Chicago Plan are all hard-
boiled business men. . . « Making Chicago attractive to vis-
itors from all parts of the world will add to Chicago's resources
a very great commercial asset, the value of which will be re-
flected in every piece of real estate within our limits. . . .
They [the planners] have particularly had in mind relief for
the neglect from which the great West Side has suffered."

Striking thus the right notes to silence discontent, Mayor
Busse proceeded to recommend as chairman of the commission
a member of the opposing political party, Charles H. Wacker.
The non-partisanship of the plan, which saved it from much
trouble through successive City Hall upheavals, was estab-
lished.

Mr. Wacker was the right man. He had been vice-chairman
of the Commercial Club's committee under Charles D. Norton,
who moved to the East before the approval of the City Council
was sought. No one, apparently, then thought of any one but
Mr. Wacker for the job. His heart was in it from the begin-
ning. It was linked in his mind, as in all others, with 593. He
had been a director of the Fair ; the youngest director, in fact.
First a brewer, then a building-association man, wealthy but
not too much so, loyal to German musical affairs, mixer in dif-
ferent sets, supporter of various things like the Symphony
Orchestra and the United Charities (of which he became presi-
dent) , Mr. Wacker could step confidently into the task of edu-
cating a prodigious mass of people, many of them indifferent,
sullen, or openly rebellious, in a subject much to their future
benefit.

316

Mr. Wacker was a ruddy, sanguine man who smiled his way
through trouble. He acquired a prized lieutenant (called sec-
retary) in Walter D. Moody, whose brain popped with pub-
licity-ideas and who could clothe the vision of future Chicago
in splendid banquet-phrases.

The two, with the advice of a good-sized executive board, set
out to convince the city. Meanwhile Edward B. Butler, art-
lover and early friend of the Chicago Plan, became head of the
Commercial Club committee, which continued to help and to
raise funds.

Years before there had been heard the chant of groups of
business leaders who cried down the artistic creations of Mr.
Burnham and his assistant, Mr. Bennett, in their top-floor
studio on Michigan Avenue. There had been heard the scoffings
of men who considered Chicago beautiful enough, 'who had
"practical" ideas that ought to be tried instead. Now the mis-
sionaries of the plan-gospel were confronting the sceptical
public at large. They had to cope with unbelievers who consid-
ered the published sketches "just a lot of pretty pictures."
They had to argue with financial wiseacres who said the money
could never be raised through bond issues. They grieved over
"whispering campaigns," which sometimes found publication ,
in socialistic or labor papers, accusing the plan-promoters of
trying to bring real-estate profits to somebody. The opposition
was not very loud, but it was troublesome ; and worse than that,
the mood of people generally was lethargic. For the huge swirl-
ing masses, so hard-pressed just in daily living, the big idea
was too much.

The average citizen, however, could not escape hearing about
the plan. If he picked up a newspaper, he found one of Mr.
Wacker's pleas. He got in his mail a booklet condensing the
outlines of it. If he went to the movies — to see the hazy inar-
ticulate films of those days — he was likely to find a two-reeler
that sought to educate him about his city and its future. If
he went to church, a sermon about the plan might be aimed at
him. If he stayed home with the children, those old enough for

317

schoolbooks were apt to confront him with a catechism which
they were studying and which asked questions like:

"What are the agencies that make for the future greatness
of the city and the greatness and happiness of all the people?"
or, "Why is the Chicago Plan superior to that of any other
city, foreign or otherwise ?"

For the brilliant scheme had been developed to place in the
schools 70,000 copies of a manual that recited the needs of city
planning, the work of Baron Haussmann in Paris and of others
elsewhere in Europe, the history and problems of Chicago, and
the nature of the commission's plan. Mr, Moody wrote the
manual. School Superintendent Ella F. Young made it an
eighth-grade study.

Young men and women in their twenties today have not for-
gotten that book. The children became voters. When in later
years they were presented with ballots including Chicago Plan
projects, they voted "Yes" almost automatically.

Wacker and Moody roamed the city, delivering stereopticon
lectures, with pamphlets distributed free at the door. More
than a tenth of the city's population heard the plan thus de-
scribed. In the newspaper offices, almost any day, a city editor
was likely to find the beaming face of Mr. Wacker at his elbow
with, "I have a little statement here," or, "Will you please ask
your headline writers not to use the term 'city beautiful5?
People are so apt to misunderstand it."

This went on for years ; but it was not all the commission
did. That body knew that the launching of a specific project
would impress the public most of all. So in 1910 the widening
of Twelfth Street, great east-west thoroughfare running over
railroad yards, through a dense and cluttered part of the West
Side, was submitted to popular vote. It won by 21,000, al-
though in the City Council previously ten aldermen had been
hardy enough to oppose it.

The next time, thanks to the whirlwind education of their
constituents, those aldermen reversed their votes.
318

With all such victories, however, even the stout optimism of
Mr. Wacker and others must have faltered when they surveyed
the huge, helter-skelter city and thought what had to be done.
It lay there, a creature of men with no time to plan, and with
land to sell. Streets had been made running at right angles,
whenever one of these early subdivisions was platted. Streets
ran into the river, or were stopped by railroad tracks, or were
choked off by lumber-yards. Thousands upon thousands of
people, even if not so dreadfully housed, could find no conven-
ience in getting from one section to another. Railway stations
had been set where it seemed expedient. The planners, attack-
ing all this, kept calm, and reiterated :

"This will be a slow process. Its realization will take many
years."

They had this kind of faith :

"As fast as people can be brought to see the advantage of
more orderly arrangement of the streets, transportation lines,
and parks, it is well-nigh certain that they will bring about
such desirable ends."

Still, it was hard for Chicago to believe that any program
could accomplish such an unscrambling of the scrambled city
as the plan suggested, in summary as follows :

"First, the improvement of the lake-front.

"Second, the creation of a system of highways outside of the
city.

"Third, the improvement of railway terminals, and develop-
ment of a complete traction-system for both freight and pas-
sengers.

"Fourth, the acquisition of an outer park-system, and of
parkway circuits.

"Fifth, the systematic arrangement of the streets and ave-
nues within the city, in order to facilitate the movement to and
from the business district.

319

"Sixth, the development of centers of intellectual life and
of civic administration, so related as to give coherence and
unity to the city."

The pictures showed, among other things, a great civic cen-
ter— a work not undertaken to this day — two level boulevards,
diagonal through streets, relocated railroad terminals, and a
system of islands, lagoons, and boulevards along the lake. On
that especially tangled subject, the location of terminals, Fred-
eric A. Delano worked out a solution which formed an impor-
tant contribution to the plan. Mr. Delano, nearly ten years be-
fore, had issued a booklet picturing what Chicago ought to be.

The fact that the lake-improvement was mentioned first in
the plan caused murmurs, although it was logical that it be so
mentioned, and had been one of the first considerations of plan-
ners even before Burnham's day.

In this place belongs a cut-back to a time, nearly contem-
poraneous with the World's Pair, when a great lover of the
lake-front was acting in what many people considered an ec-
centric manner. One real eccentricity he seems to have had:
the use of an initial instead of his first name, which was Aaron.
So he called himself A. Montgomery Ward, and later in the
title of his company omitted even the A. This pioneer business
man, who started an immense mail-order house in a loft — and
developed it regardless of enmities and jeers — earned finally
the nickname Watchdog of the Lake-Front. It became his pas-
sion, his dominating motive, his relentless purpose, to keep
buildings off that shore, at least within the mile or two bor-
dering the downtown district. He said that he acted to protect
the people, and one cannot find that any other interest
prompted him.

Through a stretch of years, Mr. Ward spied out and
squelched every effort to erect by the lake a permanent struc-
ture tall enough to count as a building. Business men went to
320

him with, "Now, surely, Mr. Ward, you will listen to reason."
He rebuffed them. Even a project to put up an armory re-
ceived none of his sympathy. He kept a corps of lawyers busy
drawing injunctions and fortifying his resolve. Four times, at
least, he fought contests to the last ditch — that is, the State
Supreme Court — and he always got a decision. It was even
necessary to reckon with him when the Art Institute was built.

It would have been hopeless indeed for the city-planners had
Grant Park been full of buildings when they began to realize
on that rich asset, the lake. As it was, they had before them a
long, curving shore, to which the waves brought gifts of sand.
It was made clear that the waste material from building-exca-
vations, from city dumps or from river-dredgings could be
utilized for "made land." Estimates showed nearly 4,660,000
cubic yards of waste produced annually. When the idea took
hold, there came a procession of wagons, sometimes etched
against the skyline like caravans of old, and there came up
from the freight-tunnel little cars, bringing the waste. It was
valueless, whereas the land it would make was estimated as
worth $45,000,000 and by some more than that.

The filling of the lake-front at length became a customary,
a hardly conspicuous, feature of city routine ; yet it was one of
the epic things of the period. The job continued all through
the early stages of formulating the Chicago Plan, and kept on
into years past the point this narrative has thus far reached.

In 1909-10, however, the lake-front scheme was still embry-
onic. So also was the boulevard-link improvement, which now
has given an unimagined splendor to Michigan Avenue.

The manual which the school-children were studying told of
the proposed widening, of the expected construction of "a wide,
roomy concrete viaduct and bridge across the river ... a
double-deck, bascule structure." It described the grades, "less
than those existing on Fifth Avenue, New York." (The writers
had to look out for everything, including the fear that vehicles
could not get up the grades!) And the book revealed how

321

Mayor Harrison (the younger) in his fourth term * had started
an inquiry regarding a north-south boulevard-connection, and
how this plan was delayed to death in sessions of successive
boards of local improvements. When the Mayor returned in
1911 for his fifth term, after eight years out of office, the com-
mission was ready for him. Formalities were got over quickly,
and the proposal came before still another local-improvement
board, which ordered estimates. ...

And there the project stopped, for the time. Moreover, the
cheery manual could talk only in hopeful terms of the fact that
the plan provided "means of securing forest places for the
people.5' It said, "The spaces to be acquired should be wild
forests, filled with such trees, vines, flowers, and shrubs as will
grow in this climate. Country roads and paths should be run
through them and the people should be allowed and encouraged
to use them freely."

Children who read those words were doubtless optimists, but
hardly to the extent of picturing themselves, twenty years
later, driving their cars over concrete highways to the forest
preserves, building camp fires, even sleeping in tents under the
luscious branches of maples and wild oaks.

Nor, perhaps even today, are they aware that they owe this
escape from the stony confinement of the city to the Chicago
Plan, to the genius of Burnham and his helpers — Burnham,
who sought above all the welfare of people, who worked hard,
and who wrote the words, "Make no little plans. . . . Aim
high in hope and works.'*

i Mr. Harrison, in a newspaper interview in 1920, credited Mrs. Horatio N.
May with the initial idea of a boulevard-link. She proposed a tunnel. Later,
Alderman, Honore Palmer, son of Potter, suggested a bridge.

CHAPTER XIII

T was a pity, some people said in a rather loud tone, that the
spirit of Chicago could not tend always toward noble visions9
constructive efforts for the people, high aims and hopes.

There were people then, in the second decade of the century^
who worried about the opposing currents — the impulse toward
creating a good as well as a handsome city, at war always with
an impulse to steal, to murder, to destroy the fruits of hard
work.

These clashing currents have upset Chicago throughout its
history, even to the present time,

In that second decade the city was rapidly growing toward
the stature it has today. It caused more and more astonishment
to the visitor.

It was nearly 200 square miles in area, and its regions where
nothing grew or was built only awaited the attention of devel-
opment-agents. It had well over 4,000 miles of streets and
alleys. People rode entirely on electric street-cars, unless
they preferred the speedy elevated trains, or used suburban
steam-lines, whose growth in capacity and number of trains

333

was scarcely less notable than the improvement in street-cars
since the 1907 ordinances. But alas ! There was no subway.

Downtown, although there remained many a lowly and tired-
looking office structure, whose elevators died at inconvenient
times, the building of skyscrapers had come to a stage repre-
senting, to many observers, the last word. Indeed, to prevent
the city from being taller, the aldermen fiddled continually
with limitation of building-height. There were at least twenty
which rose to 200 feet or more, five of them the homes of banks.
Strikes still were something of a community amusement, but
they could not check the boom, which brought a record-break-
ing total of $96,000,000 in buildings in 1910. The "new" Fed-
eral Building had been finished long ago. So with the new
County Building. The new City Hall was nearly completed.

State Street was "the greatest shopping street in the world,"
in all the guide-books. But in outlying regions there were other
brilliant shop-centers, and the mail-order business was a sort
of miracle.

The city was rich. It had over a hundred banks with clear-
ings of $38,000,000 a day. Deposits in national and State
banks had increased during fifteen years from $201,030,840
to $905,442,374, through the prodigious toil of men like For-
gan, the Reynolds brothers, Mitchell, Byron Smith, and a
legion of employees. The taxable property was estimated at $2,-
500,000,000; records do not say whether it all got taxed or
not.

The, twenty-sis railroads which entered the city — and went
no farther — were prospering with the multitudes who had to,
or only wanted to, come into the metropolis. They disembarked
in six principal stations, of which the La Salle Street terminal
and the greatly admired Northwestern Station were newer than
others ; the latter, in fact, not yet quite done. A grand new
Union Station was in prospect.

Visitors could choose among scores of hotels. Especially rec-
ommended, downtown, were the Auditorium and its Annex, the
Palmer House (No. 2), Sherman House (No. 3), the tall La
324

Salle, and the Blackstone, winner of an architectural compe-
tition.

Taxis were quite easy to find and could be enjoyed for not
more than fifty cents per mile — twenty-five cents for each ad-
ditional passenger, half fares for children. The pioneer com-
pany, the Coey Auto Hiring Co. (organized 1905), had been
followed by the Fay Auto Livery Company, using three-cylin-
der "gas" cars. Later Walden W. Shaw started the first big
company, with John Hertz as a helper. When Hertz began
running his Yellow Cabs, it was the unwritten law that a Shaw
could pass a Yellow, but a Yellow could not pass a Shaw. . * .
Strangers did not understand this.

A rich city indeed, rich in money and in energy. A domi-
nating city, with a position increasingly strategic as to the
movement of water and rail commerce.

"Chicago," said a publication of that time, "is noted for the
magnitude of its commercial enterprises, for the greatness of
its financial institutions, for the excellence of its parks and
public playgrounds . . . for its universities, its efficient pub-
lic-school system, and for other educational, artistic, and mor-
ally uplifting institutions that give to Chicago an enlightened,
a cultured, and a progressive citizenship."

The Association of Commerce speaking . . . This organiza-
tion was the descendant of a Merchants and Travelers Asso-
ciation of about World's Fair time, combined with the Chicago
Commercial Association. To avoid confusion with the Chicago
Commercial Club, it adopted in 1908 its new name. It was
powerful, and not alone in trade matters. Its viewpoint was —
and is — that whatever made Chicago more estimable, whether
in money-profits or in culture, was good for business. In 1910
it had about four thousand members, representing all kinds of
commercial effort. These men, working on numerous commit-
tees, took as their motto, "Chicago the Great Central Market."

325

But besides such work as bringing conventions to the city and
boosting the long-delayed waterway-project, they labored —
not always with a welcome from the "antis" — to assist in de-
velopment of the "good side" of the city, and especially in
educational matters.

These educational matters were doing pretty well.

The universities had expanded in a manner that rivaled the
growth of the Loop. The University of Chicago had long since
completed its Tower Group — the dominating structure being
the gift of John J. Mitchell and modeled after Magdalen
Tower, Oxford — its Bartlett Gymnasium, and the School of
Education, given by Mrs, Emmons Elaine. It was now build-
ing the majestic Harper Memorial Library. More than two
thousand members and friends of the university united in giv-
ing $1,045,052 for this library. Meantime Northwestern Uni-
versity had received from James A. Patten, the grain-king,
funds for a huge gymnasium, built during 1910 on a shaded
avenue of Evanston. An engineering-building was put up, and
the School of Commerce was growing. Both universities were
developing their work of teaching and research and were re-
ceiving strong financial aid from Chicagoans. John D. Rocke-
feller, Sr., had just announced his final gift of $10,000,000 to
his educational child, with a letter consigning it to the mercies
of the people of Chicago and the West*

Armour Institute, Lewis Institute, the Hebrew Institute,
Moody Bible Institute, and still other institutes were flourish-
ing. The city had a strong group of law schools. It had a long
roster of medical schools ; so long they had to be weeded out.
Three were Rush (opened in 1843), the University of Illinois
medical department, and Northwestern University school of
medicine. The last-named was strengthened in early days by
Dr. Nathan 3. Davis, a patriarch of general practitioners, and
a founder of the potent American Medical Association. The
city had become by 1910 the home of six Protestant theological
326

seminaries. These were matched by about as many Roman
Catholic colleges. Music schools, of which the American Con-
servatory and Chicago Musical College were the pioneers, were
drawing thousands of students. The Art Institute was becom-
ing more and more the leading school of the kind west of the
Hudson, and the public visited its collections to the number of
over 700,000 annually.

Of the three principal libraries, the Public library had
grown with the city so that it maintained seventeen branches,
some of them in quite benighted regions. It gave out more than
2,250,000 books through its circulation department. Its spe-
cial collections had been greatly enriched. For rare books, how-
ever, students went to the Newberry, with its museum of an-
cient manuscripts, incunabula, books on beautiful buildings,
genealogical, historical, and musical collections. For scientific
study people frequented the John Crerar, with its 265,000 vol-
umes in the field of science, especially medicine. The Crerar
had not yet a building of its own.

There was hardly enough Chicago-born literature of na-
tional renown to fill a good-sized case in one of these libraries,
yet genius was knocking at the gates. Not only Hamlin Gar-
land, but in that second decade novelists as good as Robert
Herrick, Susan Glaspell, Edith Wyatt, and Edna Ferber were
typing copy in Chicago — and shipping it to New York. Henry
K, Webster had a bigger audience than they ; Opie Read bigger
still. Emerson Hough, I. K. Friedman, Floyd Dell, belonged to
the Chicago of that day. Sherwood Anderson was approaching
its threshold. The Cliff-dwellers Club, founded by Garland, had
been running for a few years. And there was about to be estab-
lished that institution that has lasted through up-and-down
waves of Chicago's fickle interest in fine literature — Poetry,
Harriet Monroe's magazine. First published in 1912, it was
hospitable to early work by Vachel Lindsay and Edgar Lee

327

Masters, and to fledgling poems by Carl Sandburg, which had
vainly knocked at Eastern doors.

The public schools, despite political quarrels, had become
modernized in many ways. There had been added two high
schools for technical training alone. The Chicago Teachers
College was turning out teachers with some conception of sci-
ence as a foundation for their work. There was now a Parental
School for children who proved hard to handle. There were
vacation schools, a school for crippled children, and special
classes for the deaf, the blind, and the subnormal. The number
of pupils?had passed the 250,000 mark.

And then, the Field Museum, though still housed in the old
Fine Arts building in Jackson Park, had become in six years
what some writers called an inexhaustible mine for students of
anthropology, botany, geology, and zoology. Explorers were
continually adding to its stores. It was equally rich in speci-
mens suggesting prehistoric ages and in the latest discoveries
concerning North American ethnology. Free lectures were
being given. Citizens like N. W. Harris contributed small for-
tunes to help its extension-work in the public schools and else-
where.

The religious life of the city had come to embrace every
Protestant denomination, which did not often cross swords with
the solid group of the Roman Catholic archdiocese, then under
the leadership of Archbishop Quigley. The edifices of many
Jewish synagogues stood here and there ; the Reformed congre-
gations grew with the changing city. Christian Science
churches, usually marked by their Grecian columns, were multi-
plying. Adherents were crowding the temples of many "queer"
sects. The city had a good many Mormons, and even more un-
conventional believers. Taking all those enumerated together,
328

it is estimated that Chicago had between twelve and thirteen
hundred churches in 1910.

It was clear that the spirit of the Protestant churches was
undergoing a change. There was a trend toward social service,
and institutional ideas, though often debated, were gaining.
Militant preachers, who cried against social wickedness, were
more numerous, though not more vigorous, than in days when
Newell Dwight Hillis berated the city for its civic sloth and
wickedness. At the same time, there were here and there distinct
movements toward leveling barriers between denominations.

Undenominational, and very powerful, of course, was the
Young Men's Christian Association — established in 1878 — •
which was particularly a godsend to foreign-born and lonely
youths. Its status in 1910 is inadequately expressed in the de-
tail that it had a dozen or more buildings, in many parts of
the city. A work not as large, but equally beneficent, was being
done by the Young Women's Christian Association.

For about three years there had met in Orchestra Hall every
Sunday night large audiences under the auspices of the Sun-
day Evening Club, founded by a Yale man who had always
worked on the interdenominational idea, Clifford Barnes. He
was also known as a capitalist, but he was by nature an altruist.
Through his efforts, the club brought to Chicago religious
speakers of top rank. Soon the people crowded Orchestra Hall;
there were long lines out in Michigan Avenue when "drawing-
cards" like William J. Bryan spoke. Everything, including the
music of a fine choir, was free.

Civic ethics, in this period, found a new architectural sym-
bol, the new City Club building, completed during 1911. The
club had been formed in 1903 on the suggestion of Walter L.
Fisher, who as head of the Municipal Voters9 League had seen
the need of organized discussion to keep reform ideas stirred
up. At the City Club centered for years many of the frankest
and most thoughtful debates on traction, public improvements,
and civic misdemeanors. "Big business" was not sacred there ;
partisan politics got a chilly hearing.

329

The city was not only talkative, but also generous. Its wars
and social tragedies led in almost every case to gushes of feel-
ing, then to organizations. For example, there was formed in
the Black Winter of 1893-94 the Bureau of Associated Chari-
ties. After another stretch of hard times in 1907-08, this body
joined with the Chicago Relief and Aid Society, adopting the
name United Charities of Chicago. Millions came to be dis-
pensed by this body — always after careful study of cases — and
such sectarian agencies as the Jewish Charities of Chicago and
the Central Charity Bureau of the Catholic archdiocese dis-
bursed other millions. Union in effort became the policy after
the World War, and the Chicago Council of Social Agencies
was formed. A publication of that body in 1924 stated that
$18,000,000 a year were being expended by private social
agencies to help keep the city "healthy, happy, and safe." Chi-
cago and Cook County, officially, were spending more than
$9,000,000 a year for workmen's compensation, non-support
cases, mothers' pensions, and pensions for public employees.
There was developed eventually, and managed by Frank D.
Loomis, a Community Trust, to make simpler the devoting of
large private funds to benevolence. Charity, despite wars and
woes, grew until more than a hundred thousand Chicagoans
were giving two dollars apiece to help the poor.

A great many of the city's institutions were based on bor-
rowed ideas. Not so with a five-year-old child that was destined
to be Gargantuan — no other than Rotary.

In 1905 a young newcomer to Chicago, an attorney named
Paul Harris, burst out over the dinner-table at Mme. Galli's
restaurant with his inspiration, described as "the formation of
a club to bring together men in different lines of business for
mutual acquaintanceship and friendship.55 Sylvester Schiele
was across the table from Harris. They adjourned later to the
office of Gus Loehr, where the three, with a tailor named Hiram
830

Shorey, appointed a meeting a fortnight later, and the club
was organized on February 23. It was agreed to admit only
"key-men" in different lines of business, to meet in their offices
in rotation, and to admit members for a year only ; hence the
name Rotary, The immense growth of the society compelled a
change in some of these by-laws. Others — such as compulsory
attendance, classification, civic service — were invented by Har-
ris. Schiele contributed others. A member named Harry Rug-
gles put in the luncheon-singing custom ; another called Mon-
tague Bear conceived and designed the Rotary Wheel which
one sees adorned with Jim, Ike, and Fred.

Chicagoans all! And few Chicago ideas have spread farther.

"What a city!" would exclaim those very Rotarians — and
many an unrotarized visitor as well — "What universities,
schools, art collections, ornamental buildings I"

And what a musical city! For, with its combination of
wealthy people who had "heard things played abroad" and of
foreign-born who took music as a matter of course, Chicago
was bound to become a warm supporter of that art. Like any
urban center ^hose chief mental trait is youth, it acquired the
passion for music before it grew toward other forms of culture.

Yet, even with all the love of melody instinctive in the masses,
the privileged citizens had to make them a present of it. The
early struggles of Thomas and his orchestra form a chapter
highly suggestive of the crudeness which so many critics of the
city detected at that time. The great orchestra leader fought a
battle with deficits, no less than with the sneering criticisms
of certain newspapers, from which he might have retired dis-
heartened "but for the faith of a small group, among whom
shone a quiet gentleman named Charles Norman Fay. This
group in the '90s inspired Thomas to go on, and to present
music of the first rank, despite the fact that the entire guar-
anty fund was being exhausted every year.

331

Regardless of the general public indifference, the music-
givers had determined that Chicago should have an orchestra,
and they dug into their pockets to have it. Then in 1903, when
it seemed that Thomas and the rest really must give up, the
enterprise was organized all over again. D. H. Burnham, long
a trustee, stepped in and formed a syndicate to buy property
for a home for Thomas's musicians on Michigan Avenue. The
present Orchestra Hall was then built by popular subscription,
about eighty-five hundred persons contributing. It was opened
late in 1904, but the renowned conductor, after all his stormy
career in an adopted city, did not live to enjoy the new hall.
He fell a victim to the dampness and chill of its rooms while it
was still scarcely complete, and died in January, 1905. Fred-
erick Stock, his viola player and assistant, took up the baton,
within a few months was officially made conductor, and carried
the orchestra on to many triumphs.

Chicago's interest in music, however, had not begun with
Thomas. It had found utterance, largely because of the Ger-
man citizens' insistence, in the Philharmonic Society, whose
leader, Henry Ahner, gave concerts in the '50s with a twenty-
five-piece orchestra. This venture failed, but an energetic
leader, Hans Balatka, revived the work and was the first to
play Wagner compositions in Chicago, in November, 1860.
Balatka, through various tribulations, kept on until the ad-
vent of Thomas with his New York players about 1870.

Adelina Patti first sang in Chicago in 1853, at the age of
ten. A little earlier, the first opera performances were given in
Rice's Theater, which, however, burned down on the second
night. Nearly every year after that, some New York company
was heard in Chicago, often in the old MacVicker's Theater,
afterwards in the Exposition Building, finally in the Audi-
torium. Chicago heard all the great of the opera stage, —
Patti, Nilsson, Lili Lehmann, Materna, Calve, the De Reszkes,
and the rest. Maurice Grau gambled on Chicago's music-inter-
est ; sometimes won, sometimes lost.

At length, after years when the Auditorium performances
332

became more and more brilliant as well as profitable, Chicago
at last had its own opera company. So we return from early
days to 1910, when Chicago was almost its present self. A
strong body of guarantors, among whom Charles G. Dawes,
John C. Shaffer, and Mr. and Mrs. Harold McCormick were
leaders, organized in that year the Chicago-Philadelphia Opera
Company, "pooled" with the Metropolitan directors, employed
Andreas Dippel as general manager, Cleofonte Campanini as
musical director, and Bernard Ulrich as business manager. The
first season, with singers like Mary Garden, Carolina White,
Schumann-Heink, John McCormack, was a success, partly due
to exchange of singers with the Metropolitan. Three years later
Mr. McCormick bought the stock of the Eastern directors and
the company became strictly Chicagoan, with Campanini pro-
moted to general director. Singers like Melba, Fremstadt, Titta
Ruffo, and the "divine" Lucien Muratore were starred. Raisa
was discovered.

For a good many years, as November came around, Chicago
could see the calm baton of the Italian maestro uplifted from
his illuminated desk for the first bar of the opening of the
season.

And a goodly sight it was.

But music, after all, was a diversion of the few, a recourse of
the more refined, an indoor sport. A good deal of the vigor of
Chicago went into creating pleasure for the many.

In the pre-war days, the theater, even of the first class, was
not beyond the purse of a thirty-dollars-a-week man. He could
get a balcony seat for next to nothing and see Mansfield or
Terry ; for ten cents he could go to vaudeville, for two bits he
could be stimulated at the Haymarket, the Alhambra, or the
old Criterion. Supposing he preferred "high-class" shows,
he could find plenty on the downtown Rialto, where electric
signs flashed in profusion. In a single week in the Spring of

333

1911 there were advertised John Drew, George Arliss, David
Warfield, Albert Chevalier, Julian Eltinge, Eva Tanguay, and
the veteran Lillian Russell. The drama was in its heyday. Those
five- and ten-cent attractions, beginning to be known as the
movies, were not yet considered worth a journey downtown.

Outdoors, amateur sport was coming up strongly as a rival
of professional baseball, boxing, and racing — the last two hav-
ing turned into "illegal" amusements. Automobile-races were
plentiful. A miracle called the aeroplane was just coming. Ten-
nis and golf were having a boom, and those who did not be-
long to clubs could play in the parks.

The parks — those were among the jewels of the proud me-
tropolis. .Years and years before, when many a more obvious
problem remained to be solved, men had stepped out in what
looked like a visionary and quixotic plan for large parks, much
larger than 200,000 people needed. Then were laid out Lincoln
Park (1865), Humboldt, and Union. Jackson Park followed
the World's Fair. These great playgrounds, even with their
immense acreage and connecting boulevards, were soon seen to
be insufficient for the spread-out city; they were inaccessible
for thousands of the neediest people; there were said to be
five thousand people for every acre of park space.

Then came the idea of small parks, some of them thrust into
regions of hideous houses and poisoned air. A small park com-
mission which began work in 1899 with little money or encour-
agement, found more of those as time went on, and by 1904
had opened a respectable number of free places to play* A new
and revolutionary plan had been formulated, too: to put up
buildings, clubhouses, in those small pleasure-areas, for peo-
ple's enjoyment the year 'round; to include libraries, assembly
halls, and swimming-pools. Fourteen such places were placed
under jurisdiction of the South Park Commission in 1903-
1904. They were called for a time "socialized parks." By 1910
they had been doubled in number, and the West Park system
had acquired nine of them, while the North Parks included
seven.

None of these, owing to the scrambled jurisdiction within
Chicago's limits, was directed by the city ; but the city created
a special park commission, which put in before 1910 sixteen
good-sized playgrounds. During that year 3,000,000 boys and
girls whose pleasure had been found largely in vacant lots, or
in crowded streets, played at the expense of the city ; and there
were established also forty or fifty even smaller playgrounds,
some of them covering only a few city lots.

It was not easy to finance all this. Every bond issue meant
a political quarrel. Citizens had to pour in voluntary contribu-
tions. But, as one writer put it, "Chicago waited, watched, col-
lected cash — and did the impossible."

What a city! Could there be anything wrong with it? The
half of its face which was toward the world, and which booster
literature celebrated, was clean, brilliant, and benevolent. But,
as many thoughtful people knew, the other side was unclean,
revolting.

The "muck-rakers" of the period looked at the reverse side.
A few days before the election of Mayor Busse, there appeared
in McClure's Magazine an article by George Kibbe Turner, de-
livering these brutal blows :

"The reputation of Chicago for crime has fastened upon the
imagination of the United States as that of no other city has
done. It is the current conventional belief that the criminal is
loose upon its streets. . . . Why has that city, year after
year, such a flood of violent and adventurous crime? Because
of the tremendous and elaborate organizations, financial and
political, for creating and attracting and protecting the crimi-
nal in Chicago."

And this was written, not in 1928, but in 1907 !

CHAPTER XIV

A TJBLISHED during the last weeks of Mayor Dunne's term, in
the midst of his fight for reelection, Mr. Turner's charges were
denounced as a lie by Democrats, but were gleefully pro-
nounced by Republicans to be the truth.

He hurled figures about with abandon. His estimate of the
gross receipts by vice-lords the year before was $20,000,000.
He figured the gross receipts from gambling at $15,000,000.
He said Chicago spent $100,000,000 a year for liquor. There
were 1,000 unlicensed saloons, he declared, in addition to 7,300
that were legalized. The whole thing was made possible, he
generalized, because of the working of invincible syndicates in
league with the powers that be.

These powers laughed off the statistics as the natural hyper-
bole of an expensive magazine-writer. But no one disproved
anything. Indeed, the whole drift of Chicago history discour-
aged the desire to disbelieve. Had there not been charges away
back in the '80s, that gambling-syndicates, liquor- and vice-
syndicates controlled somebody, charges which Carter Harri-
son I hotly repelled? Had not similar accusations been flung
in the face of Mayor Hopkins, and even in that of the more
conservative Swift ; and had there not been a police scandal or
two in the time of the younger Harrison, and again in the
336

idealistic period of Dunne? And would it not be just the same
under Busse? And would it not always be just the same?

Chicago was so used to the system, of which it caught
glimpses, but never learned the whole truth, that it was bound
to be convinced of a horrible state of affairs, while it was pow-
erless to end that state.

The sovereign voter, through phase after phase of city gov-
ernment, had looked on helplessly while the men he had elected
were bought and sold; he had read how one mayor after an-
other, and one State's attorney after another, announced great
plans as he took office and alibied himself when he left it; he
knew the parrot-chatter of chiefs of police, "I will clean up
the city," "I need a bigger force," "There is no gambling." He
had seen the few really able chiefs become old men in six
months, be discarded, or resign.

Decades before — though this was little known — one of the
best and sternest chiefs the city ever had measured his strength
against a saloonkeeper alderman, and lost. He caused the sa-
loon to be raided because of the robbery of a citizen there.

The alderman appeared at the Chief's office and said:

"You don't know what you're up against. The old man [the
Mayor] won't back you."

"FH bet you he will," said the Chief.

There was a race to get to the "old man's" office. The Chief
got there first.

"You can accept that resignation of mine you have in that
pigeonhole," he said.

The Mayor was surprised. He sought to soothe his Chief;
he hinted that the alderman was nothing to him.

However, the boss reached the Mayor's ear, and within
twenty-four hours the Chief received a blunt note accepting
his resignation,

Under such conditions, suspected if not proved, the non-
political citizen had a poor chance. Still, he fought on, always

337

hoping to crash through the wall of politics. Before Busse's
term had gone far, the "forces for good" began to concentrate
against a problem which seemed to them worse than gambling
or the saloon — the problem of segregated and protected vice.
This system had reached even greater strength than during
World's Fair times, when the principal district for it was down-
town. It now flourished a mile or two farther south.

The subject of segregation was one that had been argued
for centuries, but had lately become very acute in America.
Many cities were in a state of mind over it. Chicago, a brewing-
vat of opinion and loud argument, Chicago, the home of more
political factions and clashing opinions than any other place in
the world, was bound to have its explosion.

Eight or nine years before there had been a preliminary
blast, when business and religious interests, working through
the newspapers, sought to cleanse the Loop of some nasty base-
ment wine-rooms. For there were basements in those days in
main streets, and the passer-by could look down flights of steps
into smoke-enveloped revelry. Women trapped their victims in
these dens; drunkards were robbed there. And the same kind
of bloated lords who afterwards shone as rum-runners — or in
county offices — had the same kind of malign power over city
police. One Albert Friedrich is especially remembered for
boasts of immunity, as well as for his particularly tough dive.

It took strong bombardments of the City Hall, and terrific
adjectives in the press, to dislodge these "barons" from their
dugouts under office buildings. Mayor Harrison, who honestly
held the view regarding vice that "it is impossible to run a city
of almost 2,000,000 people with a strict blue-law construction,"
finally revoked the liquor license of Friedrich and a dozen
others, and closed a string of dubious hotels.

"No more drinks tonight," howled Friedrich to the mob;
and to the reporters he said Harrison had tricked him. "The
Mayor's currying favor with the religious crowd," said he.

Complaint continued. Knights and ladies of reform like Ar-
thur Burrage Farwell and Lucy Page Gaston were heard. Mr.
338

Farwell scored one with the charge that "vice in private drink-
ing rooms of downtown hotels is just as bad as it is in Hinky
Dink's place." Ministers prayed and preached.

Fire was turned sharpest on Joseph Kipley, the chief of
police who always wore brass buttons and had a beard like
that of an elderly French sculptor. Kipley included among his
best sayings the claim, "I stay at home nights with my family.
That's why I don't see what's going on." He took this useful
family South with him on a trip that about coincided with the
sitting of a grand jury.

The jury indicted Friedrich and others and turned them
over to prosecution with a stern written reproof, but doubtless
with scepticism as to their conviction. <

And so it went. ^ ; r/m - , , ' ' \- ' .-. • , t ,

• -- ••••'•

The chariots of reform rumbled on, with many a lurch,
through the remaining term of Harrison and that of Dunne,
and arrived, in added force, at the administration of Busse.

Fred was torn between the insistence of political friends, and
an apparent desire to listen to the pleas of social workers. He
had inherited from his mother, some say, an impulse of sym-
pathy with goodness, which had not been smothered by his
wild oats. Perhaps, as a man of experience, he knew even more
than the reformers how bad things could be. He knew why cer-
tain regions were called Hell's Half Acre, or The Bad Lands.
He knew the uses of sliding windows, hung on hinges^ to look-
outs in the Levee, and all the tricks, including the elaborate
system of electric bells connecting one house with another, to
warn against police — one wonders why, when the police were
so harmless.

So that it was a mayor fully posted, at least, whom the
agents of good confronted. He swore at them, but listened. As
a matter of course, he defended his chief of police, George
Shippy, although it was shown that "some one" was protecting
vice, and besides, bombs were bursting every few nights in

339

front of the house of the gambler Mont Tennes or elsewhere.
Shippy, however, wrecked his career by shooting down an un-
happy youth, Lazarus Averbuch — an anarchist, said the de-
tectives— who rang his doorbell one night. The Chief went into
a slump after this mysterious affair, and never recovered.

Soon came the campaign against the First Ward Ball, a
noisy annual event staged in the vast spaces of the Coliseum,
where Presidents had been nominated and circuses glittered
every winter. The ball was the pretty device of Aldermen
Coughlin and Kenna for enriching their campaign funds by
about $50,000 each Christmas time. Jawn had it one year, and
Mike the next. The unfortunates of the Levee were forced to
buy tickets at fifty cents each, and their masters to take large
blocks. Every known gambler, de-luxe safe-cracker, and snake
of the underworld was expected to "check in," while eminent
politicians did not shun the fete. It went on, as one writer put
it, in a "blur of tobacco smoke, red slippers, and cosmetics."
The newspapers mentioned abbreviated costumes. All liquor-
laws were suspended ; and the frolic was allowed to go on after
hours at Freiberg's dance-hall, managed by the immunized Ike
Bloom.

In Jawn's year he would appear among the dancers, clad
often in bottle-green evening costume, receive compliments on
his latest song ("Dear Midnight of Love" was his masterpiece) ,
and beam upon the happy though staggering throng. It was
his year in 1909.

There had been a most unreasonable effort for a twelve-
month to abolish the chaste frolic. The Woman's Club and
other organizations had joined the protesting ministers and
social workers. During 1909, however, the fight had gained so
much headway that things were different. The Mayor had
taken a long step in the direction of good police administra-
tion, all the best citizens said, by appointing Leroy T. Steward,
superintendent of city mail delivery, as Shippy's successor.
The new Chief was above suspicion as to honesty ; he had plans
for reorganizing the forces on military lines (an old cam-

paigner in the Spanish- American war, he) ; he attacked the
police problem with the logical, if rather innocent, notion that
he could appoint good men and they would stay good. Mean-
time, his career became that of a superintendent surrounded
by spies, and jeered at because he appreciated art and en-
joyed Schumann's "Traumerei."

Chief Steward attacked the Levee ; successfully, for a time.
But there was no stopping the First Ward Ball with a stroke
of the pen ; the thing was too complicated for that. It involved,
eventually, such efforts as a threat against the Coliseum's
managers, and an appeal to Catholic priests who had their
own kind of influence with the aldermen. The matter finally
came squarely up to Mayor Busse. Before him, standing neu-
tral but alert in his office, appeared Arthur Burrage Farwell,
the Rev. E. A. Bell, head of the Midnight Mission, and Bath-
house John.

There was a colloquy, part of which was reported as follows :

Bell (to Coughlin), "You are leading yourself and others to
damnation."

Coughlin. "It's no worse than other balls."

Bell. "But you run it for your own profit."

Coughlin. "Well, don't you make your living off the people
down there in the district?"

And so forth.

The Mayor remained mum, but took in every word. Within
a few days Coughlin announced that the ball was off. Busse had
"told Jawn to quit." A concert was staged in the Coliseum that
December — to rows of empty chairs, and a sparsely occupied
dance-floor.

"I'm an optimist," said the alderman as he surveyed the
crash of his $50,000-a-year privilege.

He had a right to say it. For twenty years more he held his
place in the City Council, nor was there any sign that he would
leave it until his grave was ready.

341

The episode of the First Ward Ball was only a symptomatic
event, and this was true also of various demonstrations such
as the melodramatic night march of "Gypsy" Smith and his
hosts through the South Side vice-area.

Before it occurred, appeals were made to the swarthy evan-
gelist to give it up. Thoughtful religious leaders strove with
him, but vainly- His head whirling with the passion to save, he
notified the newspapers and went ahead. Twelve thousand peo-
ple, it was estimated (though the estimate may well be cut in
half) , fell into line behind him as he strode along his glorious
path, clad as for the pulpit. The marchers were somberly at-
tired also. Long black gowns trailed in the mud. Black neckties
were worn. Prom all throats issued the strains of "Nearer, My
God, to Thee" and "Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight?"

During that march, up and down and back and forth
through the squalid Levee streets, the windows of houses were
darkened ; the inmates crouched there listening. A tremendous
crowd was attracted from the first. Hoodlums packing the
curbs looked threatening, but showed no violence. Astonish-
ment was too great.

Gypsy led the crusaders to the Alhambra Theater, where he
addressed them, and with his dark, shining face upturned,
prayed for the souls of the fallen. The hour was late. Even as
the evangelist prayed, the red lights were piercing the dark-
ness again, dancing and music were resumed, corks popped in
honor of the crusader. He told his audience, "This will do vast
good. We have struck a blow for Jesus." Street-car riders the
next morning read their papers with unusual zest.

There was a crusader of a very different type who, in a

region well removed from Twenty-second Street but almost

equally tough, had taken note of the depravity and sorrow

that mocked the optimism of church trustees. He was a Dean ;

342

a young Dean with a round determined head which he thrust
frequently into trouble. A New Hampshire and Dartmouth
man, he had known Chicago only a few years.

This was the Rev. Walter T. Sumner, in charge of the Epis-
copal parish of Sts. Peter and Paul, whose cathedral had once
welcomed the wealthy residents of Washington Boulevard, but
found itself in a degenerating locale, with the dismal Desplaines
Street police station not far away. Dean Sumner was also sec-
retary of the Episcopal city missions. He was the kind who
would start with facts close at hand, and deduce from them
theories of social control. He also made a hard-hitting speech,
when necessary.

The Federation of Churches, in which Dean Sumner was in-
fluential, was strong in 1910, having about six hundred mem-
bers. It included all Protestant denominations and had the ad-
vice of settlement people as well as theologians. In January of
that year a meeting was held which resulted in an appeal to
Mayor Busse to appoint an investigating body which should
survey the whole question of vice in Chicago, and do it scien-
tifically.

Thus for a second time it fell to Mayor Busse to set in mo-
tion one of the city's far-reaching and difficult efforts to revo-
lutionize itself. It compared in scope with the early lifting of
Chicago from the mud, with the building of the drainage-
canal, with the urban reconstruction involved in the Chicago
Plan. But it was less attainable than any of these, for it dealt
with human conduct.

The Mayor agreed to appoint the investigating body re-
quested. It came to be commonly known as the Vice Commis-
sion. Dean Sumner was named chairman. The diversity of mem-
bership is implied in such names as Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus,
Mrs. Charles Henrotin, Julius Rosenwald, President A. W.
Harris of Northwestern University, Chief Justice Olson of the
Municipal Court, Judge M. W. Pinckney, of the Juvenile
Court, W. I. Thomas, University of Chicago sociologist, and
Graham Taylor, head of Chicago Commons, which had fought

343

a battle of its own against the ousting of decent foreigners by
resort-owners.

According to some versions, the Mayor had been led to be-
lieve that all appointees were pledged to segregation. Perhaps
a similar belief caused the aldermen to fall in line. Even Cough-
lin and Kenna, the First Ward "lords," and John Powers, vet-
eran foe of reformers, shouted "Aye" when it came to voting
money for the work.

A full year passed, during which corps of investigators
worked day and night gathering facts. They interviewed hun-
dreds of people in the vice-district. Scores of conferences were
held by the different committees, hearings were given to all
sorts of informants, from missionaries to white-slavers. The
data were assembled at great pains and published in a volume
as thick as an astronomy textbook, with a statement and appeal
to the public. One paragraph which went pretty deep read as
follows :

"It is the habit of Americans when they make laws to insist
on ethical ideals. They will not compromise. They have been
endowed, however, with a fine ability to be inconsistent, and
having once declared their ideals, to find no difficulty when it
comes to the administration of the law in allowing officials to
ignore them. . . . This is the basis of graft and the greatest
evil in municipal government."

The report had its comforting side for the officials who suf-
fered by implication. It declared that the conditions were not
unique in the city's history; in fact, they were "better than
the city has known in many years." (A possible bouquet for
Chief Steward.) But it was set down as proved that vice existed
as a highly commercialized business. The profits were set at
over $15,000,000 a year — only $5,000,000 below George
Kibbe Turner's figures. Men were the gainers, women the vic-
tims. The number of these unfortunates was estimated to be
5,000. This was small compared with the estimate of 15,000
issued by the city Civil Service Commission a year later.

A shot was delivered which made many a business man set

down his coffee-cup and pick up the newspaper with both
hands :

"With this group [the men in control of vice] stand osten-
sibly respectable citizens, both men and women, openly renting
property for exorbitant sums."

There was a stir in State Street when store-managers read
that economic and sanitary conditions of department-store
work made women of these working-forces especially susceptible
to being misled. Some stores, said the report, paid only six
or seven dollars a week to women clerks. No woman, it was as-
serted, could live on less than eight dollars.

In the vast array of facts there were not overlooked the
plight of many immigrant women, coming to Chicago alone,
alighting in thronged railway stations with addresses of friends
pinned to their clothing, lured away by cab-drivers, express-
men, or panders, and eventually lost. Sometimes the addresses
proved incorrect. Sometimes the women who had expected to
be met by friends were defeated because the immigrant-trains
had been sidetracked for other, richer, traffic. There were ter-
rible stories between the lines. That beneficent agency, the
Immigrants Protective League of Chicago, was not yet born.

The situation of children was dwelt upon; the possible fate
of little people who sold gum or candy or newspapers late at
night under the red lights ; the moral destruction of messenger-
boys ; the fact that in the Pirst Ward two hundred and ninety-
eight boys and girls under twenty had been enumerated, living
in dwellings that overlooked the back yards of disorderly
houses. These were facts which officials found it hard to answer
with the words, "The people should have their liberty."

And there was one section which pointed forward to a mighty
problem of later years. It described the establishment of vice-
areas within, or adjoining, the settlements of Chicago's grow-
ing population of negroes. These poor and bewildered people
were represented as about one jump ahead of the spreading line
of red lights. It was shown that a great majority of the em-
ployees in resorts were black. And the children — 1,475 boys

345

and girls were counted in the Negro settlement, polluted by un-
sought contact with "the worst forms of bestiality."

What should be done about it all? Segregate or not? The
Mayor, remarking, "These conditions are with us ; to pretend
that they do not exist is hypocrisy,55 had called for a scientific
study, and for recommendations as to the best method of con-
trol. So the fifteen men and women of the commission gave them
to him. They declared for a rigid suppression of the evil. Not
only did they urge breaking up the segregated districts, but
they called for an end of "protection," and an enforcement
of the law, which was clear enough— $200 fine for each keeper,
the same for each inmate, the same for any one renting prop-
erty for prostitution, the same for any one found in a resort.
The commission asked the establishment of a Morals Commis-
sion of five members and a Morals Court to deal exclusively
and intelligently with persons arrested under those ordinances*

But before the slow wheels of city legislation could turn, one
four-year mayor had gone out — sickened by tongues that
wagged, it is said — and another, of the opposite party, had

come in.

A Democratic mayor — Harrison in a fifth term, after a
victory over Prof. Charles Merriam — sat in the fine new City
Hall, while a Republican State's attorney served out his term
in the dreary Criminal Court Building. He was John E. W.
Wayman, known as a bright young lawyer, and, at the outset,
as a "live" official, but nothing like as capable as his predeces-
sor, John J. Healy, from whom he had taken a nomination
after a contest that stirred much bitterness.

Chicago's open brothels, so powerful a factor in its reputa-
tion from the first, were beginning to go. In 1911 the Mayor
closed the Everleigh Club,1 most elegant and infamous bawdy-

Harrison's attention was called to a pamphlet blazoning Chicago's
fame in terms that enraged him ; declaring, in effect, "two things you must not
miss: the stockyards and the Everleigh Club." Exploding, the mayor ordered
the resort closed, over protests from police officials.

346

house of Twenty-second Street and probably of the whole
world as well. Visiting European gentlemen said that it eclipsed
anything of the sort in Paris. Transcontinental travelers mar-
veled at its seductive distinction, its cultivated gentility, its six
parlors each named for a different flower, each furnished in the
color of its particular blossom and scented by a fountain that
gave off the faint perfume of the chosen bloom. The creation
of those decorous sisters, Minnie and Ada Everleigh, was, in its
infamous way, a work of art, and the legend of its grandeur,
of its inmates, some of whom, it is said, wore only evening
gowns and discoursed politely on Oscar Wilde or Longfellow
according to the abilities of the patrons, was one that had
spread from coast to coast. In a lesser grandeur shone the
resort of "Vic55 Shaw. The mayor closed that also.

The Arena Hotel, too, disappeared. For almost a generation
this most aristocratic of assignation-houses, standing at 1340
South Michigan Avenue, had been the resort of ultra-sophis-
ticated sinners. Seen from without, it was only a three-story
residence set well back from the sidewalk, its front door never
opening, its blinds drawn. But in the rear was a courtyard
which carriages, then, in time, automobiles, entered by a drive-
way that passed under an arch, and at the side door the patrons
were admitted by an attendant who politely turned his back
that it might always be said that no attache of the Arena had
ever looked upon the face of a lady guest.

Other "houses,55 somewhat less notorious across the world,
winked out as Chicago cleansed its name. The major work,
however, was yet to come. The autumn of 1912, the Vice Re-
port having been doing its propaganda work for more than a
year, found Wayman in a quarrel with a good many of the
people who had thought him a white hope. He was seeking a
renomination, and his actions were puzzling indeed. They cul-
minated in a battle with the current grand jury, Wayman
declaring the indictments it brought illegal, and calling it a
runaway grand jury.

A storm came down upon his head. Part of it came from the

347

Committee of Fifteen, a voluntary body composed of men like
Clifford Barnes, its chairman, Julius Rosenwald, H. P.
Crowell, of the Quaker Oats Company, and Harold H. Swift,
youngest son of the great packer. Men like these had several
years before financed the sleuthing of a young attorney named
Clifford Roe, who proceeded to smash a far-spread syndicate
of vice. Now they made it hot for the wavering Wayman, who
was in discomfort as well because Mayor Harrison was pad-
locking resorts, suspending police, and stirring up his Civil
Service Commission.

It was a sultry Summer for Wayman, nor was it improved
by the fact that Virginia Brooks, a young woman leading a
crusade in a tough southeastern corner of the county, was
calling him names that hurt. Being of a somewhat theatrical
turn of mind, she organized and led a parade through the
Loop district at the end of September. Reporters not too strict
about numbers said that they counted 10,000 persons in this
odd procession, which included many children, and was embel-
lished by floats as elaborate as are seen nowadays in a Cali-
fornia carnival. Perhaps the prize-winner was a Viking Ship
presented by the associated Norwegian churches. Twelve men
in armor stood alongside the ship, dominated by a young man
in pink tights representing the god Thor. So that there would
be no mistake about him he carried a placard saying: "The
Great God Thor with his hammer. The Norwegians will help
smite the saloons."

An anti-cigarette float read, solemnly, " 'The Cubs must cut
out cigarettes,5 says Murphy." Some of these allusions seemed
irrelevant to Wayman, but the paraders got back on his trail
at an Orchestra Hall meeting.

Some weeks before this, another odd thing had happened.
Philo Otis, secretary of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a
member of a very old Chicago family, and a man of strict views,
asked an injunction against the owner of a building next to
the one he owned in the Levee that was occupied by the Mid-
aight Mission, He charged direct violation of the city ordi-

nances. This, the first case of the kind in Illinois, resulted in
a clear victory. The offending house was closed. The case was
called the Appomattox of the war on open vice.

Wayman, harassed, bristling from a colloquy with Chief
Justice Olson and in a state of mind which, according to re-
port, was the precursor of that in which he committed suicide
some years later, flew into a passion. Threatened by a special
grand jury, compelled to withdraw from a fight for renomina-
tion, and peeved at the millionaire committee, he suddenly
swore out warrants in the Municipal Court for a hundred and
thirty-five dive-keepers, owners, and agents of property.

There followed, at once, the most spectacular raids ever seen
in Chicago's Levee. Battalions of detectives invaded the dis-
tricts, especially on the South Side, where the most powerful
resort-owners reigned* Keepers and inmates were jammed into
patrol-wagons, except when favored ones — among them a giant
negress named Black Mag — were allowed to ride to the police
stations in their own shiny autos. A terrific clamor and a mid-
night orgy filled the streets ; "good folk" who watched it looked
on in dismay. Curiosity-seekers parked their cars near enough
to see the grinning or weeping sinners being herded into Black
Marias. Gangs of young men rushed up and down the streets
breaking into empty houses or cracking the doors of places
that had just put out their lights. The boom of Salvation
Army drums, the gleam of their banners under flickering
lights, amid the yelping crowds, added a strange touch to that
Hogarthian night picture.

Next day the quiet, well-behaved Chicagoan had another
shock to his feelings. From some central headquarters of the
underworld went out an order to the "slaves" like this :

"Get on your loudest clothes and more paint than, usual and
parade the streets."

"Go to the residence districts, ring every doorbell ; apply for
lodgings."

"Get rooms only in respectable neighborhoods.5'

So into Michigan Avenue at four o'clock in the afternoon

349

poured a horde of women in silks or satins, wearing big plumed
hats. It was said that some had not been outdoors in daylight
for months. They tripped or staggered along, while parties
in automobiles drew up to stare and the police stood helpless.
Scarcely a house or flat in avenues south of the Loop missed
a call from some woman pleading that she had "lost her home.55
Not one was taken in ; but on the other hand, when lodgings
were offered by committees hastily formed, scarcely one would
accept the invitation.

The terrible picture faded as quickly as it came. One thing
that drove it to the rear was the shooting of a candidate for
President named Theodore Roosevelt in Milwaukee, the night
of October 14.

But, on returning to the front page, the segregation topic
was batted back and forth; university presidents told their
views ; sociologists everywhere were drawn into the argument ;
a noted woman physician remarked, "A sin hidden is much
better than a sin exploited." Brand Whitlock sent the sage
word from Toledo that "there is no solution that does not pre-
suppose human perfection.55 Segregationists and anti-segrega-
tionists fell upon each other, debating until a minister cried
from his pulpit: "For the Lord's sake, let us have a rest!
Shut up ! Let us get together without a word of publicity and
look our problems in the face.5'

The vice-lords watched the turmoil unperturbed, with sneers.
They filed bonds, and waited.

One who felt the least concern was a burly duke of the vice-
domain, James Colosimo. He was "pinched" almost with apolo-
gies. His right-hand man, by the way, was one John Torrio,
even then feared. An assassin was to have Colosimo's blood
within a few years, and the crown was to pass to Torrio. He
in turn was to hand it down to a young gun-fighter named
Al Capone, alias Brown.

350

A few lines about the aftermath of the crusade :

Mayor Harrison appointed a Council committee which can-
vassed the same ground the Busse commission had covered at
a cost of $20,000. The aldermen met, listened to testimony for
weeks, were about to vote a pro-segregation report, but weak-
ened and reported for "further investigation."

Barratt O'Hara, lieutenant-governor under Dunne (the for-
mer mayor, now head of the State), headed another body which
investigated vice and low wages together. A decided change
in wages of women resulted; unions of department-store em-
ployees were formed.

The Morals Court recommended by the Sumner group was
established in the spring of 1913 and heard some five thousand
cases in a year — many before crowds of morbid sightseers. It
was followed by a Court of Domestic Relations and a Boys5
Court.

The Morals Commission had to await appointment by Mayor
Harrison. He named at first a second deputy chief called Funk-
houser, who lasted until Thompsonism put a blight upon every-
thing of the kind. In 1915 Harrison named the Morals Com-
mission. Confronted by the Committee of Fifteen with list after
list of owners of resort-property, he gave the migrant resort-
owners little rest. As his term drew to a close, it seemed that he
discerned a change in public sentiment since the '80s, a revul-
sion against restricted vice-districts under police supervision,
and he declared, "Chicago is through with the segregated-vice
idea."

New slams at vice, prosecutions of crooked police, war on a
"clairvoyants' trust" and upon those new terrors, "auto ban-
dits" (one "Teddy" Webb was the worst) , broke, with a lot else,
when Wayman was succeeded as State's attorney by Maclay
Hoyne, grandson of Chicago's first city clerk. There was an
almost continuous uproar about matters suggesting that, as
Hoyne said, "Chicago's criminal world was increasing in power

351

from year to year, and growing bolder." True though this may
have been, it was not then an international scandal. It was only
part of a local turmoil which fascinated strap-hangers and
brought guffaws from the man whom "Al" Smith has called
"the fella on the sidewalk."

And all this time the city grew larger, more generous, more
favored of the gods, more stately.

352

CHAPTER XV

E now turn back to May, 1909, in order to quote a few
words about a Chicagoan of considerable prominence, then and
later:

"Few men in the community have stirred conflicting enthusi-
asms, prejudices, animosities, and altogether divided public
opinion as has 'Billy5 Lorimer. On one side he has been lauded
as a wise and progressive statesman, and on the other de-
nounced as a disreputable gang politician. . . .

"Through all the praise and abuse Lorimer has maintained
the same placid, benign attitude which by many is considered
the secret of his success. A man who never lost his temper, who
never has been heard to swear, who does not smoke or drink,
who always spoke softly and kindly, Lorimer, with that patient,
childlike countenance, those compassionate, drooping eyelids,
has endured all and bided his time. Always observing appar-
ently the doctrine of non-resistance, he has awaited oppor-
tunity, rested while his enemies worked, listened while his rivals
talked, and then blandly and gently led the way to the solu-
tion he himself had planned."

Thus the Chicago Tribune, in unusually benevolent mood.
What called forth the statement was the fact that Billy
Lorimer, while the Illinois Legislature was deadlocked at

353

Springfield in that May of 1909, had walked off with the
biggest prize of his life, the chance to sit at the north end of
the Capitol at Washington alongside of the veteran Shelby
Cullom.

Scarcely had he taken the oath of office before some of those
in Chicago who considered him a disreputable gang-politician
began planning to unseat the poor, harmless fellow. And this
was finally done.

The story of the struggle covers a period of years, and be-
longs to the nation as much as to one Great Lakes city. It
makes a brief appearance here because the enmities it gener-
ated are still forceful in that city, and because the antagonists
on both sides were very interesting Chicago people.

Take Lorimer, for instance. There have been glimpses of him
in earlier pages as street-car conductor, as constable, as Con-
gressman. What needs to be told now is that he, the son of a
Scotch Presbyterian minister, was born in England in 1861 and
was brought to Chicago when nine years old; that he and a
brother were left three years later to support their mother and
three sisters; that Billy, in that village-like Chicago of the
'70s, sold newspapers and blackened boots on street-corners,
painted signs, drove a truck for packing-firms, — all this before
he collected fares on the old Madison Street horsecars, and
became a big man around the car-barns through organizing a
Street Railway Employes Benevolent Association. He was a
politician, even then in 1884, boosting James G. Blaine to
people who rode on his platform in the chill October weather.1
Lorimer became an organizer, bringing together in his mother's
kitchen some friends who formed the Sixth Ward Republican
Young Men's Club. In those years he became known and ap-
proved by Joseph Bidwill, a district leader. They learned much
from each other.

Without pursuing Lorimer through the mazes of Chicago
i Knut Hamsun was a street-car **hand" in Chicago at about the same time.

354

politics to any extent, it becomes clear that he was of the very
soil of the city. He was a boy among boys who formed early
and enduring friendships, expressed in joint business ventures
and political schemes. They cared nothing about the abstract
science of government, nor about what their enemies in a
"higher" sphere thought of them, nor about ethics. What they
cared about was friendship — and jobs, v

So this group, dominated always by Lorimer, pushed its way
up, regardless of the frowns of civic idealists, and laughing
at buffets from the Democrats. Having once acquired power in
the city and its suburbs, Lorimer developed ability as a maker
of mayors, county officials, even governors; not overlooking,
however, his own pay-check, for at thirty-five he was a Con-
gressman. The mayors he "made," wholly or in part, were
Washburne, Swift, and Busse. (He failed, much to his regret,
to "put over" a shrewd, cold-blooded judge named Elbridge
Hanecy.) His governors were Tanner, whom he boosted for
state treasurer as early as 1894 — and at whose right hand
he sat in the Executive Mansion during the Yerkes warfare
of 1897 — and Richard Yates, for whom he stampeded the
Springfield "love-feast" of 1899. Lorimer's county officials
were legion, including John A. Cooke and John Linn, old
friends whom he made court clerks, and who went to prison for
taking too many fees; and Charles S. Deneen, who, though
elected State's attorney on the Lorimer slate, soon broke away
from him. Lorimer also "made" a senator, Albert J. Hopkins.

Back there in the days when Yerkes was the target of "Hang
him !" mass-meetings, Lorimer was his cool and reliable agent
in getting votes for fifty-year franchises. When the drainage-
canal was building, he had a contracting-firm which certainly
got none of the worst of it on bids. He made money here and
there ; he was "in" everything ; he was roasted and kicked ; his
blond head rose again and again, bloody but unbowed, from
newspaper attacks. His friends got into deep trouble, but no
matter how it affected him, he strove to get them out. It was
written, "It is part of Lorimer's philosophy of life that it

355

is no crime to cheat the law of its prey if that prey happens
to be a friend."

As for his enemies, a list of them would nearly fill the rest
of this volume. Suffice it to mention those whom he himself
honored with special mention when he defended his claim to a
Senate seat.

He named President Taft, he named Theodore Roosevelt, he
named William J. Bryan — but the roster must again be lim-
ited, this time to Chicagoans. Well, there was Governor
Deneen, whom Lorimer had helped to make State's attorney,
only to find that cheating the law of its prey would not be
so easy as he expected. Then there were the editors of the
Chicago Tribune, to whom Lorimer was disposed to refer
vaguely as "the McCormicks and Pattersons." Robert W. Pat-
terson was editor until just before the Lorimer scandal started,
and Medill McCormick was publisher. Mr. Patterson died,
Mr. McCormick became ill, and the control passed to Robert
R. McCormick and Joseph Medill Patterson. Had Lorimer
spoken of the "heirs of Joseph Medill," he would have been
accurate. Then there was James Keeley, the militant manag-
ing-editor of the paper, who had gained glory in company
with Chief Justice Harry Olson, by pursuing to Africa a shiv-
ering fugitive bank-wrecker named Paul 0. Stensland.

Another "enemy" was Victor F. Lawson, editor and publisher
of the Daily News. About the time when young Billy Lorimer
was selling papers on the streets, Mr. Lawson, son of a pros-
perous Norwegian who helped found Lincoln Park, was work-
ing in the office of the Daily Skandinaven. While Lorimer was
a conductor, Lawson, with M. E. Stone, was making the
young Daily News a success. When the blond boss became Con-
gressman, the brown-bearded Lawson was making two news-
papers successful — the Daily News and the Chicago Record.
The views of the two men concerning civic duty, municipal

356

government, and social ethics were utterly irreconcilable. And
though they were both churchmen, Mr. Lawson's religion took
the form of devout membership in the old New England Con-
gregational church, suggestive of Pilgrim worship. Mr.
Lorimer did not greatly resemble a Pilgrim.

Mr. Lawson fought with all the belligerency which underlay
his calm exterior the machinations of Yerkes. Lorimer fought
with his devious devices, his back-room conferences, and his
friendships to make Mr. Yerkes richer.

Now Mr. Lawson had an intimate friend named Herman
H. Kohlsaat who, naturally enough, was among the "enemies"
of Lorimer. Mr. Kohlsaat was a few years younger than Mr.
Lawson, having been born in Ohio in 1853; his childhood was
spent in the ancient Illinois metropolis, Galena. At fourteen
he came to Chicago, where he became a carrier of Chicago
Tribunes, then a cash-boy for Carson, Pirie, Scott and Com-
pany, then a bakery salesman. He bought the lunchroom busi-
ness of his firm, quickly formed his famous "string" of stool-
and-counter lunchrooms, progressed both there and in his large
bakery, and at forty was wealthy. He then bought a half-
interest in the Inter Ocean, sold it and bought the Chicago
Times-Herald and the Evening Post. He was in high pros-
perity in 1901, when he took over Mr. Lawson's Record, sold
the Evening Post to John C. Shaffer, and called his merged
morning paper the Record-Herald. Selling this to Frank B.
Noyes in 1902, Mr. Kohlsaat stayed out of the field for eight
years, but in the Lorimer-scandal year of 1910, he returned
to the fray, repurchasing the Record-Herald.

A gentle soul and generous, a lover of club-talks, maker of
newspapers that were too good — for his purse — Mr. Kohlsaat
w;as in some ways a strange man to be chosen by destiny as
agent of the coup de grace for Lorimer. Yet that was prac-
tically the fact.

These powerful publishers formed a group who, on a great
many matters, managed to agree. They were of one mind, at

357

least during 1909-1912, concerning the infamy of Lorimer.
Therefore he lumped them together in his category, and called
them the "trust press," an enduring phrase!

Of course there were the Hearst papers, morning and eve-
ning. Lorimer did not say so much about them. Mr. Hearst was
by way of being a Democrat. And lastly, there was the Inter-
national Harvester Company, which was also, after a time, in
the conspiracy which Lorimer deemed arrayed against him.

For the origins of the unremitting conflict between the anti-
Lorimer publishers and the placid Billy himself, one would
have to search far into the early factional quarrels and line-ups
of Chicago. Doubtless one factor was the struggle to wrest from
Yerkes his traction-monopoly. Others might be found in more
intricate relationships, business and social, outside of which
Mr. Lorimer always stood. The sober old furnishings of the
Chicago Club might have told tales. The Chicago was not Mr.
Lorimer's club.

Whatever the cause, the group quietly dominated, off and
on, by Mr. Lawson — adviser of the hot-blooded Tribune crowd
as well as of the rather talkative Kohlsaat — did not like Mr.
Lorimer. He became Senator, the potential dispenser of a vast
patronage, much against their will. And unfortunately for him,
the circumstances attending the selection of this would-be
political Kaiser soon began to furnish ammunition for the
allies.

In April, 1910, the Tribune published a terrific scoop. It was
the confession of a wretched Democratic Legislator named
Charles A. White that Lee O'Neil Browne, chunky member
from Ottawa, Illinois, had paid him $1,000 to vote for Lorimer
as Senator, and that Representative Robert E. Wilson (for-
ever after called Bathroom Bob) had handed him $900 in the
bathroom of a St. Louis hotel.

The Tribune was performing one of its big stunts. It had
358

joined with State's Attorney Wayman in checking up the facts,
and within a week two others of the fifty-three Democrats who
voted for Lorimer added their confessions. Browne was in-
dicted for bribery, and within a fortnight his trial was begun.

Events followed, in a tangled skein very expressive of mod-
ern legal procedure, as well as of one side of Chicago social
doctrine. A third confession, this time mentioning $2,500, was
blurted out. The Browne jury disagreed; another jury ac-
quitted him. A juror in this second trial related to a grand
jury that he was bribed to vote "Not guilty." Charles E. Erb-
stein, attorney for the defense, a lawyer whom criminals
trusted for many reasons, was suspected, indicted, tried twice,
and the second time acquitted.

The Chicago fella on the sidewalk knew not what to make
of it all. However, that fella had been fully able to understand
and enjoy an episode that had happened a few months before,
adorning the whole tragedy-comedy most delightfully. In Sep-
tember, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt, out of the White House
and restless to return, was invited to address the Hamilton
Club of Chicago. He had been on a Western trip, and on the
train whom should he meet but Mr. Kohlsaat. The publisher-
baker told the ex-President some very pertinent facts about the
blond boss.

And so, when a committee of the club, in panoply of silk
hats and braided coats, met Mr. Roosevelt at Freeport, he was
ready with an unexpected question.

"Is Senator Lorimer to be at the banquet?" he inquired.

"He is a member of the club and has accepted an invitation,"
was the reply.

"Then I must decline to go," snapped Roosevelt.

He explained that he thought Lorimer as bad as the poor
devils who took the graft. He insisted, it was recounted, on a
telegram being sent to Lorimer "advising him of the situa-
tion." This was done. And Lorimer stayed away. His only satis-
faction was to hear, months later, one of his defenders say on
the floor of the Senate:

359

"Theodore Roosevelt could enjoy a luncheon with Booker
Washington, but could not afford to dine in the same room with
William Lorimer."

As 1911 came in, both the Illinois Senate and^the United
States Senate appointed committees of investigation, A sub-
committee of the latter exonerated Lorimer, but a minority
headed by Beveridge opposed this. In March, despite all the
long speeches and the even longer testimony, the Senate voted
46 to 40 to let Lorimer stay. Among those who backed him
was Chauncey M. Depew of New York.

The fella on the sidewalk said, "I knew they'd never land

that guy."

But wait, it was now Mr. Kohlsaat's turn to play the
"heavy" part. According to his own account on the witness-
stand, Mr. Kohlsaat was walking to the Chicago Club one day
to take luncheon when he met Clarence S. Funk, general man-
ager of the International Harvester Company. They fell into
conversation about the Lorimer case. In this casual talk Mr.
Funk mentioned a rather startling fact. It was that a gentle-
man had asked him, the month after Lorimer's election, for
$10,000. "Well, we put Lorimer over down there at Spring-
field and it cost us about $100,000," was what this gentleman
had said— so Mr. Funk told Mr. Kohlsaat. The $10,000 was
to be one of a number of contributions to reimburse the
$100,000 pooL

"Of course, I don't want to be known in this matter," Mr.
Funk warned the editor.

Mr. Kohlsaat kept the story to himself. But a little later,
he began printing on an inside page in the Record-Herald
editorials very unfavorable to Lorimer. Finally, one editorial
distinctly mentioned the $100,000.

The committee in Springfield, headed by Senator Helm,
hopped on this editorial. It summoned Mr. Kohlsaat. By the
time he reached the witness-stand Mr. Funk authorized him to
360

tell all. Further, Cyrus McCormick, head of the International
Harvester Company, had assented. Then Mr. Funk was called.
He declared Edward Hines, lumberman, was the person who
asked that the Harvester Company give $10,000 to reimburse
the restive donors of the $100,000.

"You people [of the Harvester Company] are just as much
interested as any of us," were the words attributed to Hines,
"in having the right kind of man at Washington."

Mr. Funk refused politely, on behalf of the Harvester com-
pany.

The "probe" went on. Mr. Hines denied the story. Next,
Edward Tilden, packer, was raked into the inquiry as reputed
treasurer of this fund. Mr. Tilden got himself arrested for
refusing to give up records ; he was released by habeas corpus.
There was a succession of interesting witnesses before the Helm
committee. Then the scene shifted again to Washington, where
a new inquiry, stirred up by Senator La Follette, was ordered
in June.

To skip a wilderness of detail, including 5,000,000 words
(actual estimate) of testimony and speeches, the second at-
tempt to unseat Lorimer was successful. Senators, convinced
by the new revelations, flopped over. The grave Shelby Cullom,
who had been defeated for renomination because he stood by
Lorimer in 1910, turned against him. The vote was 55 to 28.
The case had dragged on to July 13, 1

Surveying the musty record, the reviewer of today feels a
certain depression over the thought of that long-continued
burble of words, that sweating of miserable culprits, that
shifting and always dreary scenery. So much rhetoric! Such
digressions! Such wreckage! Even names that in those days
evoked a thrill are today as the dead leaves. Indeed, the
majority of the actors are in their graves, including Browne,
who fell from his Ottawa back yard into the river not so long

361

ago, and Erbstein, who died of pneumonia, carrying many a
secret with him into the dust.

There rises most distinctly the figure of Lorimer, making his
last speech, his face dripping with sweat in the heat of a Wash-
ington July, his serenity gone, his sentences full of "Oh, my
friends!55

He attacked Mr- Lawson as a tax-dodger on the strength
of a clerical error long since explained.

He attacked the Tribune because of its lease of school-prop-
erty,— the canceling of a revaluation clause, a matter upheld
by the courts.

He assailed Governor Deneen for having, when State's at-
torney, retained the fees of office.

He assailed Taft, Roosevelt, the State's attorney in Spring-
field, the Harvester Company, and all the rest.

Mopping his broad white brow, he shouted, "When you have
driven me hence, beware ! The guillotine is there for you, as it
is here for me/5 He said that had he been willing to enter the
offices of the "trust press55 as a suppliant he could have been
their "white-haired boy.55 With pathos he pictured success for
a lake-to-gulf waterway, one of his pet ideas, and he not there
to vote for it!

In soft-violin tones, he referred to his family, saying, "When
I return to my home, one look at their beautiful faces, one kiss
from each, will be compensation for me."

After the vote was announced, he walked toward the cloak-
room with a smile. He came home to Chicago soon after, there
to be met at the station by an automobile parade, with plac-
arded cars and cheering occupants, and led by one of Lorimer's
bright young men — William Hale Thompson,

The "trust press/5 the Tribune school-lease, Lawson's taxes,
Deneen's fees — these became themes sounded for years on the
loud horns of political campaigners. If Lorimer did not create
362

these themes, he at least developed them like a master of coun-
terpoint. He taught them to his pupils. William Hale Thomp-
son learned to sing them forwards and backwards. And the old
dream of a waterway, the useful old piece of ballyhoo — he
taught them that also.

Lorimer was through, said the fella on the sidewalk. Instead,
he had no sooner been buffeted from the Senate than he was
scheming new schemes. He might have turned successfully on
his enemies, some think, had it not been for another calamity.

Shortly before the White confession, a blundering small-
town man named Charles B. Munday had succeeded in interest-
ing Lorimer in organizing a string of banks headed by the
La Salle Street National. Lorimer became president and
elicitor of funds from public treasuries to fatten his banks.
Munday was vice-president and financier. "Oh, what a finan-
cier!" Lorimer might have cried in a speech, had he been
making speeches just then.

Little interest attaches nowadays to the horrible details. The
banks, especially the La Salle Street Trust and Savings — into
which the La Salle Street National had been converted — were
rotten with mismanagement, loans to politicians, and loans to
Lorimer commercial ventures. After the crash in June, 1914,
people recalled the closing of the John R. Walsh institution in
1905, when the career of that old-time Chicagoan, railroad
organizer, newspaper owner, was wrecked. The fact was re-
vealed that when the two Lorimer banks were merged, their
persuasive president had taken over to the Central Trust Com-
pany his check for $1,250,000, and cashed it; the money was
carted to the La Salle Street Trust and it was there, according
to the law, when the State examiner called. After he had gone,
it was carted back to the Central Trust.

Much later, in official statements, officers of the latter bank
explained that the transaction was following a custom of long
standing. Its president, Charles G. Dawes, who was far from
owing Lorimer any favors, political or otherwise, has repeat-
edly told friends why help was authorized for the ex-Senator

363

who had worn a path from one bank to another to get the cash.

"Why did you let him have the million?55 a reporter asked
Dawes in 1924^ when he was campaigning for Vice-President.
"You believe he kept you from being Senator."

"Oh," replied Dawes, "the poor devil was down and out."

Few people at the time of the debacle were sorry for him.
Depositors waited. Stockholders "shelled out." There were wails
everywhere. On charges of looting the banks of nearly
$2,500,000, and of breaking practically every banking-law,
Lorimer, Munday, and others were indicted. The former was
acquitted ; Munday went to prison.

"He's done now," said the straphangers of the ex-Senator,
purged of blame.

He faded into the background, indeed. Perhaps it was time
for younger men. He ate of bitterness, and he met the re-
proaches of friends now impecunious. His great friend Busse —
a note for $20,000 signed by the ex-mayor was found in the
bank — died in debt that Summer, his death possibly hastened
by worry.

The interminable legalisms, receiverships, hearings, suits
and counter suits, judgments, awards of a small per cent, to
stockholders and depositors — the creditors* final loss was sixty-
•one cents to the dollar — dragged on through more years. After
a while nobody read the papers to find the latest on the Lorimer
banks.

Europe went to war.

364

CHAPTER XVI

COUPLE of strange "character actors5' now enter the spec-
tacle.

One is James A. Pugh, a mayor-maker; the other Fred
Lundin, would-be President-maker.

Following them is to be introduced, in the midst of the trag-
edies and the chaos of a war of many nations, the mayor of
Chicago whom the two, counseled by the hero of the previous
chapter, created, and over whom they quarreled.

Pugh was the loquacious one, the back-slapper, of the two.
His unconscious play of humor, closely allied to pathos, con-
sisted in his hero-worship, his naive faith in his strapping play-
mate, Thompson, of whom he said years ago, in character-
istically unprintable language, "He's the est

of a man who ever grew up in Chicago." It was said in the
tone of a compliment.

They knew each other as very young men. Thompson,
though a Bostonian by birth (1869) had been brought to
Chicago in his infancy. His father, Col. William Hale Thomp-
son, was by that time wealthy enough so that William, Jr.,

365

could enjoy elegant leisure. However, according to his cam-
paign biographies, he sold papers and did odd jobs so as to
keep out of mischief. Later he was cook and foreman on a
Wyoming cattle-ranch.

Pugh, born in Wales four years earlier than ^Thompson,
became a promoter, a schemer of warehouse-projects on the
lake-front. He made money and spent it on things like speed-
boats, yachts and aristocratic dogs. A good while before he
experimented with politics, he built four motor-boats called
Disturber I, II, III and IV. The last one, the experts said,
would run sixty miles an hour, "if," said Pugh, "she don't bust
herself.35 She did neither.

Happily, and without the cares of state, "Jim" Pugh and
"Bill'5 Thompson in those days sailed the blue bosom of Lake
Michigan. Of the two, it is testified by experts, Thompson was
the better skipper.

"Say what you like of him," declare old yachtsmen, "Bill
could sail a boat."

They were blithe companions in the yacht-club rooms, in
hotel bars, in athletic-club billiard-rooms. Pugh was Thomp-
son's superior, mentally and also physically, although a good
many inches shorter in stature. Bill, say intimates of both, had
a touch of awe of this rough Welshman, who could outtalk him
any time. Yet they played about serenely together, except when
they were too exhilarated. One evening, it is related, Pugh
chased Thompson in and out of several hotel and office build-
ings, in a fury over something or other; lounge lizards and
loiterers at bars were convulsed to see a chunky bull-calf of a
man pursuing a giant athlete through swinging doors and out
into alleys.

At some time in those early days, Thompson loaned $25,000
to Pugh to save one of his warehouse-projects from calamity.
Almost that exact amount, the Welshman declared years later,
he spent of his own funds to help elect Thompson mayor.
Others have estimated his expenditure at ten times $25,000.

Toward 1915 he was prosperous. He had a warehouse-

366

scheme in which Lundin had joined him, and the stock sold
well. In those days Pugh, known to yachtsmen everywhere, not
omitting the veteran Sir Thomas Lipton, wore diamonds, $20
shoes, fur coats ; he had a house on Sheridan Road, a magnifi-
cent red automobile, and a $2,000 bulldog which sat haughtily
on the seat by the chauffeur.

When he died on his Michigan farm a few years ago, there
remained in addition to that property, which he had deeded
to his secretary, an estate of $10,000.

Lundin's comedy was more subtle, and at the same time was
related not so much to naivete as to the sinister humor of the
anterooms of legislative halls, or the littered hotel-chambers
of political conferences.

It pleased the newspapers at one time to picture him as a
mystery man, but there never was any mystery either about
his activities or about his mentality. Everybody who knew any
history knew that he had been an admired member of the
Lorimer political group as far back as his twenties — and that
was as long ago as the World's Fair. Everybody who recog-
nized eccentricity, such as Chicagoans most enjoy, could iden-
tify the mental processes which made him wear, in a city where
most men dressed as alike as two magazine "ads," a long black
frock coat, a stiff -bosomed white shirt, an artist's flowing bow-
tie, a pair of conspicuous colored glasses, and a hat with an
egregiously broad brim. That was his custom from early man-
hood to middle life. Not only had he not forsaken it, but he had
become proud of it. More consistent in his f reakishness than in
his political alliances, he chose to be stared at in Chicago streets
because of his clothes, although his strange, cat-like nature
bade him retire to obscure hotel rooms, use the telephone spar-
ingly, and be very careful what checks he signed.

The uniform was a perpetual reminder of the days when
he had driven up and down the remoter streets of Chicago in a

367

wagon drawn by a single horse, selling a soft drink of his own
invention called Jumper Ade. He took with him a pair of ne-
groes with banjos, who would lure a crowd by sentimental dit-
ties. Then to the open-eyed circle, under the glare of torches,
Lundin would extol the "delightful and refreshing beverage"
which he had for sale.

Lorimer scouts marked him out as a person with qualities
greater than those of a medicine-man. The blond leader admit-
ted him to counsel, took him away (politically) from blunt,
one-legged Henry Hertz, North Side boss, and proceeded to
"make something of him.55 He made him a State Senator at
twenty-six, and found him adroit in framing small Senate bills
annoying to corporations. Lundin was useful in the great
Yerkes conflict in 1897, to which so many Chicago relation-
ships and ructions run back. He made himself strong in the
seventh Congressional district, and in 1910 captured a seat
in the national House of Representatives. At the other end of
the Capitol Lorimer was trying to hold onto his own place. The
two old friends, both of religious inclinations, roomed together
in the Washington Y. M. C. A.

Somewhere along the line, principally in those vivacious
early conferences of politicians now grown elderly and scarred,
Lundin became the associate not only of Lorimer, but of men
whose exploits have been described in thousands of newsprint
columns: Such statesmen as Len Small and Michael J. Fah-
erty. Nor did the ex-medicine-man lack opportunity to know
the promising youth who, with his athletic record, his social
abilities, and Ms father's money, might prove supremely useful
as the occupant of a big office — even the mayoralty.

Lundin very carefully cultivated Thompson. There was a
club where Bill was a hero, where he was the honor guest at
dinner. Fred always managed to be there. He was a busy man,
but he got around to the dinners.

Thompson noticed this loyalty of a gentleman so distin-
guished, and liked Lundin more and more. Whenever possible,
368

the gawky man with the wide, humble smile * would whisper in
the ear of the tall, handsome, susceptible Thompson that he
was destined for great affairs. "Even," with a toothy grin,
"the White House."

In the meantime, Jim Pugh, the old yachting friend, con-
tinued to picture, without quite such broad flattery, the good
which Thompson could do Chicago were he mayor.

"Boss of the greatest city in the world; how would you like
that?"

For the time being, the prospect was enough*

There was a war in Europe. The news of it had come to the
busy, sufficient-unto-the-day, Anglo-Saxon Chicagoan, know-
ing nothing of Europe's intrigue or anxieties, as something in-
credible, a bad dream. Within a short time he began to ap-
preciate it as a spectacle, to enjoy following the communiques
and sticking pins in maps. He learned much geography and
the pronunciation of the names of French generals.

The realities became more vivid to this Chicagoan when he
began to sense in the air he breathed a tension of nationalistic
feeling. If he had not thought about the "foreigners" and
about how deeply ran their blood-tie with Europe, he thought
about it now. Not only did he find German, French, English ac-
quaintances— citizens of those countries and reservists — being
summoned across the sea to fight, but there was reflected to
him the rising war mood, the basic war hates, of many who did
not go. It was mostly unintelligible to him, the reason why
people who had become Americans, and were prospering here,
should so bitterly take sides about the beastly doings of a lot
of countries whose bondage they had escaped . . . Well, he
could understand how the English felt. But as for the Ger-
mans, French, Poles, Italians, he thought they were fanatics*
i He called himself "the poor Swede," also, at times, "insignificant me."

369

Why not take it coolly? Why not profit by it, as some business
men were beginning to do? The war could not last long, any-
way. Already, in the Winter of 1914-1915, there was talk of
the great peace- jubilee to be held in Chicago soon ; a big chorus
of singers, etc., etc. . . .

The politicians saw further into the minds of the foreign-
born than did the ordinary citizen. They knew more about the
race-divisions, the numerical percentages, and the way differ-
ent peoples generally voted. Not only were they unofficial
census-takers, but they were psychologists. With some satisfac-
tion they saw the cleavages developing in a society which the
less active-minded Chicagoan dreamily supposed to be pretty
well Americanized and solidified. They noted, and fanned, the
sparks of prejudice, the growing flames of allegiance to this
"old country55 or that, this group or that, which began to array
Teuton against Latin, which so disturbed many of the placid
Scandinavian groups, which divided even nationalities like the
Germans into those who repudiated Emperor William II, and
those who clung to his image.

The little politicians listened to pitiful stories of men and
women of foreign origin whose relatives were being killed, shed
a crocodile tear, and passed on the news to the big politicians.
The latter filed the interesting data in a drawer marked "war
hates," to be drawn upon at a later day.

Foxy leaders like Fred Lundin overlooked none of the valu-
able new facts, the new influences upon voters, that were com-
ing to light. But the time was not yet ripe to use them.

The program was to introduce gingerly, and by tactics that
would not create alarm, the carefully instructed and properly
flattered William Hale Thompson into a complex local war-
fare over the control of Chicago affairs. The thing had to be
done with care, not only to avoid awakening the slumbering
370

voter — and diverting the war fans from their maps — but also
to avoid reminding people of the defeats the Lorimer-Lundin
element had quite recently suffered. They had, in 1912, sought
to cover the retreat from Washington by organizing the Lin-
coln Protective League — which the "trust press5' persisted in
calling the "Lorimer-Lincoln" League. The State ticket so
headed was crushed by the voters, and not alone by Wilson
voters. Moreover, in that same defeat, William Hale Thomp-
son failed to gain the place on the board of review for which
the League nominated him. There had followed this, too, a
Republican Club of Illinois, to which Bill was persuaded to
contribute rather liberally, and it had not outlasted the odium
of the Lorimer bank failures.

So, although Pugh and his friends were talking persuasively
to yachtsmen, boxing-followers, and old-time football fans who
had seen Thompson play tackle on the C. A. A. team of the
'90s, it was deemed imprudent to release the complete news of
how mighty a man Thompson was. Lundin, who, though mak-
ing money as Pugh's partner, was awaiting the best moment to
shoo him away, let the athletes organize. He let a campaign
be started, without too many brass bands, to run Thompson
in the primaries against Harry Olson, and against Charles M.
Thomson, who represented the remains of the Bull Moose move-
ment in Chicago Republicanism.

Lundin also waived objection to Thompson's platform, the
planks of which most interesting to a reader of the present
were :

"I will suppress crime, drive the crooks out of Chicago, and
make the streets safe for men, women, and children. I will pro-
tect women from insult in public places.

"I will put the public schools under a business administra-
tion.

"I will lead to resurrect the spirit 'I wil? for a greater Chi-
cago."

The platform was passed around from hand to hand of the

371

Lorimer-Lundin conferences, whose gang of would-be payroll-
ers was waiting to rush to the City Hall, and was greeted with
chuckles. It was handed about at dinners of the Pugh athletic
group, while the candidate, flushed and blinking, sat at the
head of the table, nodding :

"Sure, that's my platform."

There were slaps on the broad back.

"You'll win by 40,000, Bill,"

But not much of this was revealed to the readers of pro-
Olson newspapers, since for the most part they treated Thomp-
son as a minor candidate. The real conflict seemed to be on the
Democratic side, between Mayor Harrison, seeking nomina-
tion for a sixth term, and Robert M. Sweitzer, a pleasant
county official backed by Roger Sullivan, and a Roman Cath-
olic*

Thus, while the trench warfare of the 1914-1915 Winter was
proceeding in Europe, while generals schemed out Spring of-
fensives and the Kaiser's naval strategists were preparing for
the reign of terror on the ocean lanes, Thompson's backers so
managed things that only small-bore artillery was used against
him. Newspapers reviewing the candidates could say nothing
worse than that he was a Lorimer follower. They gave casual
publicity to his promise that he would be personally^ respon-
sible for the conduct of the police force, and they printed, in
small type, "He says he will not use the people's money to
build up a machine." It was a political contest, and little else.
The big bosses played chess. The voters . . .

This primary election, in which Chicago women for the first
time voted for mayor, was held in February. Thompson "nosed
out" Olson. The editors were so surprised that they declared
that only the official count could decide the result. The official
count showed that Thompson won by 2,508.

On the Democratic side Sweitzer defeated Harrison more
decisively. The Mayor prepared, after all those years, to re-
sign his place. A new deal was in sight, and why not? Only
here and there was a plaintive voice heard like that of the
372

"poet" who, perhaps thinking of the father as well as the son,
wrote lines under the title, "Harrison's Farewell," lines begin-
ning:

"Oh, its good-bye, old Chicago, farewell to the City

Hall.

Sorry I've got to leave you, but it's written on the
wall."

Sung to the tune of "Tipperary."

Chicago did not know what was happening to it that Spring.
Heavy shocks came from across the water. Ships were sunk.
England blockaded Germany. Hindenburg rose like a vast
shadow of Thor on the eastern horizon, and peace looked far-
ther away. Thousands of men walked the streets of Chicago,
idle, as in the days of 1893-1894.

In the whirl of new motives and new worries, it was easy for
the political chess-game, played without regard to the public
welfare, without the slightest sincere concern for anything but
power, to run on, move after move. Only a few out of some
2,500,000 people bothered to know that Thompson had a
"Lorimer past" ; few thought about old grudges like those re-
sulting from the 1904 campaign, when Deneen had neatly
beaten Frank Lowden (Lorimer's preference) for governor;
few understood how quickly such quarrels could be silenced.

The war-map fans glanced at paragraphs on the fourth page
of the evening papers telling how angry Harrison was at Roger
Sullivan because of the February result, and how, before that,
Sullivan had been angry at Harrison because Larry Sherman
beat him for the Senatorship.

Who cared about a war of political bosses, when the kings
of Europe were .covering the land with blood, and people could
read items like, "The German losses now are estimated at
1,800,000"?

373

Soon, however, the fight between two home-boys to be
mayor began to emerge into a louder, more wordy phase, which
distracted the citizen from his gazing across the Atlantic. The
campaign grew hotter. The candidates began to shout from
the stump the vituperations carefully taught them by the
bosses. Sweitzer raked up Lorimerism. Thompson countered
with the charge that if good-natured Bob were elected, Roger
Sullivan would be the real boss of the city. Sweitzer discovered
inconsistency in Thompson's speeches :

"He talks church, home, and civil service in Hyde Park; in
the First and Second Wards it is, fil am for prize-fights, dice-
games and jobs for you colored boys.5 "

Sweitzer learned later that, in both places, Thompson was
believed.

Broad-shouldered Bill developed unexpected skill with an
audience. Then, as in later campaigns, his appearance on a
platform, high-colored, grinning, the warm-hearted, magnetic
friend of everybody, clear to the back row, would rouse mad
huzzahs. He adopted the eight-gallon hat. "When I rode to the
range,35 fell into his speeches, which came to be an amazing
jumble about street-car fares, subways, promises of police re-
form, slams at Roger Sullivan, and fragments of things touch-
ing on national issues. The crowds sat goggle-eyed and admir-
ing as he soared into regions of economics, severely blaming
Wilson and the Democrats for "the present industrial depres-
sion/5 and reviving from a past era the phrase, "the full dinner
pail.55 (Tremendous applause.) He would quote figures sagely
from a slip of paper. He hesitated at none of the most perplex-
ing questions of national statesmanship — and approval came to
him in waves, not only from the anxious dolts on the floor, but
from educated logicians who sat, with folded arms, on the plat-
form behind the water-pitcher.

It was a matter of life and death for the Republican leaders
to elect Thompson mayor, or at least to elect a Republican
mayor. It was life and death for the Democrats to win.
374

While the world was whirling into hell, while, moreover, the
city of Chicago was suffering from its same old diseases — lazy
government, crooked police, stupid smoke-inspectors, dirty
streets and litters of garbage — the leaders on the Democratic
side dropped everything to carry their feuds to the bitter end.
Prom the Republican side came the voice of Mr. Deneen,
saying :

"Let us forget our differences. [Meaning the row in Repub-
lican ranks.] We must return to the old American policy of 'the
majority rules,' if our party is to be restored to power. [In
1916.]

"Mr. Thompson comes from one of our oldest and best-
known families. . . . He has character, energy, knowledge,
and experience. . . ."

Mr. Deneen hoped that this would be the first of a long line
of political victories that would "restore the Republican party
to control of the city, the county, the State and the nation."
(Long continued applause.)

The bosses now took out of the drawer marked "war hates55
a few of the squirming specimens there concealed. The Demo-
crats worked up an apparently passionate movement for
Sweitzer among the Germans. (About the same time, some of
the more fiery Germans were holding meetings and crying out,
"God punish England !") Sweitzer pro-Germanism proved to
be a mistake. Before it could be stopped, it was turned into a
weapon for that pure-blooded American, Thompson. Clubs
with badges, "Unser Wilhelm fur Biirgermeister,5' did not
work so badly.

Religious hates were dragged in along with war hates. No
one said a word against bigotry. It was useful. It was the duty
of party leaders, in order that the ranks be kept solid for 1916
— no matter what became of Chicago — to uncork the vials in
which hissed the hottest chemicals such a city knows. From the
Lundin-Pugh-Thompson office issued bales of secret circulars
reviling Sweitzer's Catholicism, insulting the Pope, and decry-

375

ing Sullivan both as a Catholic and because of an old, faded
scandal, Ogdto gas. From the Democratic printing-presses
were ground out roorbacks to the effect that Thompson had
promised to drive Catholic teachers from the schools. The
Thompsonites smuggled into mail-boxes charges that Sweitzer
would fill the schools with adherents of the Pope.

Everything grew frenzied. Women, hectic in their first may-
oralty battle, organized clubs on both sides. They sat in the
galleries of theaters and hissed opposition candidates at meet-
ings, A Can't Stand for Thompson Club of women paraded.
A pro-Thompson rival shrilled references to somebody named
"Barney" Grogan. It got so that the doors of noon rallies
would be crashed by mobs of enemies, and the steel curtains
had to be rung down.

"Full dinner-pails! . . . The Pope! . . . Lorimer! . . .
Wide-open town."

Thompson was the champion of decency. Clergymen prayed
for him. He was a Protestant, anyhow . . .

Thompson would get back jobs for thousands. The unem-
ployment was terrible, and it was aggravated by a building-
trades deadlock almost as bad as that of 1900. There was an
Industrial Commission appointed by Mayor Harrison, which
had recommended many things, plans thoughtfully worked out
by a great humanitarian, Prof. Charles R. Henderson ; he died
of overwork on this task. The mob scarcely noticed his name.

Thompson, Thompson, would fill the empty pails !

On the Saturday night before the election, there was staged
a boisterous Sweitzer parade in the Loop. It was a nightmare
of gaudy floats, bands, the county Democracy in silk hats,
braying auto-horns, sidewalk fights, and drunkenness. Thomp-
son men sought to break the ranks. A band of sixty in cow-
boy hats raged up and down under the bright electric lights of
the Bialto. . . . Flags were torn from cars, coats were torn
876

from Democratic backs. The carnival went on until late hours.
The saloons were packed. Harpies picked the pockets of
drunken men.

And so this was what the town would be like under Sweitzer,
reasoned quiet folk, moralists, and Republicans.

To the polls on the April day swarmed woipen voters in
great numbers — to their first big local election. A vast majority
of the registered men and women jammed the booths, bursting
with emotion over religion, morals, or political bossism. Demo-
cratic leaders caused their droves of sheep to vote for Thomp-
son in large numbers.

And so it was a landslide. Sixty-one per cent, of the women
(while incidentally electing a better City Council than Chicago
had seen since 1897) cast their ballots for Thompson.

When the votes were counted, the creature of Pugh and his
Sportsman's Club, also the political adopted son of Lundin and
Lorimer, was found to have captured Chicago by a plurality
of more than l^OOO.1

iThe Chicago political writer, Paul R. Leach, contributes this reminiscence:

"Receiving the returns that night in a room in Hotel La Salle were three
men, Pugh, Thompson, and Lundin. Pugh was at the 'phone.

" 'Bill, you old son of a ' Pugh shouted, slapping Thompson on the back,

'I always knew you'd do it !'

" 'Mistah Mayah,' said the suave Lundin, offering his limp hand, 'allow me
to congratulate you.'

"From that moment, friends of Pugh say, dated the downfall of Pugh as
Thompson's closest adviser, and the ascendancy of Lundin. Flattery did it.
Those who have remained close to Thompson today never call him 'Bill,' nor
even Mayor. It is Mr. Mayor."

877

CHAPTER XVII

11 E sat at the great glistening desk, in a room banked with
flowers. To the casual eye, he was a healthy, normal, and earnest
being. He was impressive, he was even handsome, with his sleek
black hair, so faintly touched with gray, his warm black eyes,
his height. Good, amiable man. And lucky !

Head of the government of a city of 2,500,000; the city in
which his father had believed and for which his father had
toiled. Mayor of Chicago, with congratulations raining in ; of a
pleased city — pleased, anyhow, to have the latest fight over —
a united party, with the approval of business men, the worship
of a multitude of spirited friends. Mayor of Chicago, with a
chance to make greater and greater a city which he truly be-
lieved to be glorious.

Thompson at forty-six!

He would be a good mayor. He would include in his broad
vision "all the manifold interests" of such a metropolis. Lead-
ing business men were to be his advisers ; he asked for their co-
operation. Thompson would not build a machine — not he. Nor
would he let the street-car companies raise their fares, not a
cent.

This calm and smiling Thompson, confronted just after his
378

term began by a strike of the street-car men, drew together the
contending chiefs and smiled them to a settlement. "He acted
with unfailing good humor and common sense," said a contem-
porary chronicle. Chicago, which had spent several half -en joy-
able days getting to work by impromptu buses, by catching
rides, by pedestrianism, hailed the settlement with relief.
Thompson was hero for a day.

Again, when the excursion-steamer Eastland keeled over in
the river, costing the lives of hundreds more than were lost in
the Iroquois fire, the mayor was keenly on the job. That is, he
was " junketing,'5 but he hurried back on a special train. He
was prompt to appoint a relief-committee, to stimulate Chi-
cago's outpouring of money for the families of victims. On be-
half of the city he publicly resented the calmness of a Cabinet
officer who seemed indifferent to the slack Federal inspection
of lake steamers. He spoke for the people. He was a Mayor !

It was in those days the people dubbed him "Big Bill,35 in
affectionate Windy City language.

Ambitions whirled in his brain; visions of mighty deeds for
Chicago. A new city booster, in direct succession — yet how dif-
ferent— from William Bross and John Stephen Wright, had
come forth to lead the "I will" chorus. He was louder than his
predecessors, and his voice was supported by the powerful new
devices of a great publicity-age — electric signs, glistening cars,
"ads" brilliant with color and ingenuity, soon an imperfect in-
vention called' radio.

The magnificence of Chicago, its greatness, past and future
— and, not forgotten, that waterway! — thrilled Big Bill, di-
verted him from slow, careful tasks like city bookkeeping. He
talked like a super-real-estate man, and sometimes like a
prophet. It was in his blood.

Within a few years — and he may have been planning it even
then — he was to inspire a sort of miniature World's Fair. He
and his crowd organized on the Municipal Pier a celebration
called the Pageant of Progress, in which anxious business men

879

joined (the times being very bad) in order to exhibit their
wares. There were parades, circus stunts, and general uproar —
followed by another uproar in the courts and out when it was
found that city officials had an interest in a concession monop-
oly. "This great permanent exhibition" ran for two years only
(1921 and 1922).

Back there in 1915 Thompson burst upon the Chicago scene,
a huge figure emitting jokes the crowd could understand, a
glittering drum-major for a brass band any merchant was glad
to join.

Powerful politically, he dared to issue an official order no
mayor had attempted for more than forty years — closing
the saloons on Sunday. A great publicity idea! A "national
stunt." The cries of cheated saloon-men died away harmless
outside the City Hall windows.

Bill was boss. At the same time, Lundin was the "man be-
hind." And as for Pugh, he was now a discarded friend.

380

CHAPTER XVIII

ITHIN a period that seems like the leap from noon to mid-
night, Chicago found itself in the war.

The situation was not simple. There were close to half a mil-
lion people of German birth or ancestry living in the city.
There were a good many thousands belonging to other nation-
alities who, secretly or not, sympathized as much with the Prus-
sian cause as with the opposition. There were those excited by
the recent overthrow of Czar Nicholas. The word "anarchist"
came back, soon to be replaced by "Bolshevik." In addition,
there was a large group, or coalition of groups, which honestly
objected to the entrance of the United States into the world-
conflict. Chicago's immense family of human beings, who had
been through so many crises together, and who had accom-
plished so much despite petty tiffs around the breakfast-table,
was now to show what would happen in the face of perhaps the
severest test of all.

What sort of commotion could be expected, in a community
so mixed, in one where men "spoke right out," where every fel-
low was as good as the next, and knew it? How wholeheartedly
would the Chicago which, with its suburbs, had given Wilson
217,528 votes in 1916 as a peace-keeper support him in a war
abroad? Would there be Copperheads and draft-riots now?

381

There were no riots. There were no parades of protest. In-
stead, through the anxious fortnight before the declaration by
Congress, when lawyers debated whether a state of war existed,
Chicago became military on the theory that such a state did
exist. The aldermen, the universities, and business bodies galore
declared for universal military training. National Guard regi-
ments were mobilized, and left for "an unknown destination."
Youths from Gold Coast families eagerly sought recruiting-
stations. The owners of yachts entered them for a flotilla of
sub-chasers; William Hale Thompson's Tuinga headed the

list.

Indeed, the roar of "Uphold the President!" quite drowned
out the voices here and there — including those of two Chicago
Congressmen — raised by people who doubted "whether the
present provocation would justify a declaration of war." (The
provocation, of course, was the loss of American lives at the
hands of the submarine fiends.) Men who pulled down the Stars
and Stripes got black eyes. "Disloyal" grumblers got jostled on
street-cars. Suspected "alien enemies" were jailed. Some of
them were innocent enough, it turned out. The pronunciamento
of the Loyal Legion, calling for the resignation of one Con-
gressman, was more conspicuous than the resolutions of the
Chicago Federation of Labor asserting that "the common peo-
ple do not want war," and declaring that armed neutrality was
enough*

Bugle-calls sounded in the early sunlight on the last day of
March. All day, along boulevards and under the thronged win-
dows of skyscrapers, passed parades of men in uniform, and
joyful bands. The Loop flowered with recruiting-banners, and
silken Stars and Stripes floated like brilliant clouds overhead.
Then in the evening three thousand people swarmed into the
Auditorium, while thousands more beat at the doors. Governor
Lowden, with his booming voice, hurled to the topmost bal-
conies his appeal to stand by the President; Bishop Samuel
Fallows, the tears coursing his ravaged face, spoke, and was

echoed by loud "Amens." Bryan was hooted as a pacifist. The
sedate Harry Pratt Judson, university president, read resolu-
tions which were adopted with a shout. A lone woman heckler
was silenced.

In these days there were crammed together the framing of
the draft-legislation ; the scramble of headlong youth to enlist
before conscription ; the turning loose of furious young women
to shame slackers ; the organization of the councils of defense ;
hot demands like that of the Bohemians to tear out of school
textbooks a page that praised the Kaiser, striking resolves like
those of James A. Patten and others to quit speculation in
grains ; a leap in prices, and a strike of bakers to boot ; a decla-
ration by wealthy women, of whom Mrs. J. Ogden Armour was
one, that they would trim household budgets.

There was a mystery, a disturbance, in the air. Newspapers
were feeling the first censorship. Government and State agents
were rounding up possible spies, and turning most of them
loose. A cook in a swagger club was conspicuous among these.
There was a mild heckling of German symphony-orchestra
players ; and a rash public-school teacher, who in a pamphlet
called the war unpopular, was suspended, the door slammed on
him, and "Benedict Arnold" flung at his stubborn head.

The war was the most popular thing in Chicago.

How, then, explain the attitude of the Mayor of Chicago,
who loved popularity above all else?

While Washington moved toward the final decision, he had
been shaking his large head, doubtful about things which to
most others seemed clear enough. He doubted the propriety
of pinning yellow ribbons upon slackers at the marriage bu-
reau, where applications by hundreds — mounting to as many
as four hundred a day — were swamping the clerks. Facing
questions about endorsing the expected draft, he kept an odd
silence.
JEIad he really been thinking of German sentiment, he must

have given at least some attention to utterances like that of the
Illinois Staats Zeitung, leading daily, whose editorial "admits
that the German government has sinned, and condemns the
government for those sins. There is only one kind of thought
and action for every loyal American citizen: Stand by the
Stars and Stripes.'*

The Mayor, flying in the face of the city and possibly that
of Providence too, became more emphatic. He issued a pam-
phlet, when passage of the draft-bill became certain, opposing
that measure and also objecting to supplying foodstuffs to the
allies. This, he argued, would bring starvation to the American
workingman. The brochure was read with astonishment.

Then came the stiU celebrated "Joffre incident." No sooner
had the stalwart and placid general, accompanied by gesturing
Viviani, reached American shores than cities tumbled over each
other, asking for visits. The mayors of these cities uniformly
presented the invitations. Thompson was silent. His silence be-
came prolonged enough to attract notice by newspaper men,
who, as one of them has written, "supposed at first that the
Mayor's attitude was more a matter of indolence than any-
thing else." The City Hall reporters kept at him, however, and
on the third day, about three weeks after the declaration of
war, the brooding thoughts of the Mayor found utterance.

"It is possible," he said — the accounts of the interview agree,
word for word — "that a portion of the citizens of Chicago
might not be wildly enthusiastic over it" [a visit from the
French mission] .

He gave out the news that he had asked the corporation
counsel, his staunch friend, Samuel Ettelson, for an opinion
about his authority to extend the invitation. The next day,
more of what was on his mind came out,

"Are these distinguished visitors," he inquired, "coming here
to encourage the doing of things to make our people suffer
further, or have they some other purpose?'*

He read to the scribbling reporters census-figures which
showed that in the public schools there were numerous f oreign-
384

born children, and thousands born in America of foreign-born
parents, and he said, looking up :

"Chicago is the sixth largest German city in the world. It
is the second largest Bohemian city, the second largest Swed-
ish, the second largest Norwegian, and the second largest
Polish."

He had evidently prepared for the interview.

"I think," he said, "that the mayor is presuming consider-
ably when he takes the position that all the people are in favor
of this invitation."

Thus the questioning, doubting Mayor, who presently was
"rebuked" when the City Council voted unanimously to send
to the Joffre party the invitation which the corporation coun-
sel had ruled it ought to send.

The anger of enthusiastic war-workers was unbounded. The
newspapers interviewed everybody, eliciting here a statement
that the Mayor should resign, there an assertion that his
name should not be mentioned in polite society. Representatives
of eight Slavic nations joined in a public protest. Theodore
Roosevelt was in town, and snapped out before a great meet-
ing the words, "Let us not try to curry favor with the Ger-
mans by meeching meanness to General Joffre."

There never was perfect accord between Thompson and
Roosevelt. At a parade in honor of Hughes in 1916, the "Cun-
nel" appeared, the Mayor also; there were terrific huzzahs.
After the parade, Thompson came into a room full of his
cronies, flung his cowboy hat on the table, and said loudly :

"Well, I put it all over the son of a gun. He thought the
cheers were for him."

The Joffre incident passed over for the time being. Chicago
had now, after two years, got somewhat accustomed to unac-
countable things, unpleasant surprises, issuing from the then
voluble Mayor* It had been jolted in the Autumn of 1915 by
his order closing the saloons on Sunday. The political motive of

385

that action, if it was political, ne\er had become fully clear.
Somewhat clearer were the City Hall's muddling of the police
problem, the neglect of the Morals Commission, and the tem-
porary ruin of the city tuberculosis sanitarium through politi-
cal appointees. People said, "Lundin, that's all.'3 People said,
"The 'poor Swede' tells him what to do." And the "poor
Swede" wailed, "I'm not in politics at all."

Was Thompson's anti-war attitude caused by Lundin ? Was
it due to friendship with the more Kaiser-loving Germans?
Was it keen politics? Was it stupid politics?

At least one trustworthy witness, Colonel (now General)
John V. Clinnin, came out a couple of years later with first-
hand proof that early in the war, before the entry of the
United States, Thompson and Lundin shared the belief that
the Americans were opposed to the war, that the people would
not stand for a war with Germany. Clinnin actually saw the
City Hall organ, the Daily Republican, being "edited," with
the Mayor and his mentor inspiring editorial attacks on Wil-
son, and somebody else carrying the copy to the printer.

"No candidate," said Lundin to Thompson, "could succeed
with the German vote against him."

Indirectly, through newspapers friendly to him, the Mayor
fell back upon the view that it was the City Council's business
to invite Joffre and Viviani; and he pointed out that at the
Auditorium meeting when they were welcomed he delivered an
official address. Lastly, he exhibited a letter sent by Cyrus Mc-
Cormick, chairman of the citizens' committee, thanking the city
administration. The letter, however, was addressed to Mr. Et-
tleson.

The Mayor stubbornly held his ground. Late in the Sum-
mer of 1917, he again exhibited his defiance of the mass-senti-
ment in favor of the war and against its opponents. The Peo-
ple's Council of Peace desired to hold a convention of protest.
It found no welcome in North Dakota, in Minnesota, or in Wis-
consin. Next, the pacific group announced that it would meet
386

in Chicago. The Mayor did nothing to prevent this, and the
delegates arrived.

Governor Lowden acted without delay. He sent word to the
Chicago police that such assemblages were not permissible any-
where in Illinois. The Mayor, enraged by this invasion of au-
thority, gave his own orders to the police, whose Chief declared,
"I have notified my men to offer no resistance to the meeting."
Thus the convention was held under police permit, while troops
sent by the Governor to prevent it were on the road.

"No official under our constitution and laws," wrote Thomp-
son in a message vetoing a resolution passed by the City Coun-
cil to rebuke him, "is vested with the arbitrary power and
tyrannical authority to prejudge that a meeting called for
lawful purposes is to be used for an unlawful one."

Was it shrewd politics, reasoned pacifism, or Lundinism?
Whatever it was, these war incidents became accepted as part
of a Thompson program to "grab the German vote." They fig-
ured in his unsuccessful campaign for Senator in 1918. They
were still alive when he came up for reelection in 1919*

Before that date, however, a movement had come to the fore-
ground which, in effect upon Chicago's politics no less than
upon its permanent social structure, was more important than
anything due to the war.

387

CHAPTER XIX

Jl HERE were withdrawn from activities in Illinois, during
1917-1918, more than 350,000 men. Of these fighters in army
and navy Chicago sent the most, proportionate to its popula-
tion. Enlistment and the draft half emptied offices and shops.
The steel-plants, railroads, factories, were starved for men;
and not only because of outgoing youths donning uniforms,
but because the great streams from Europe had been dammed.
By this time nearly every nation from the tip of the British
Isles to the Bosphorus was involved. An immigrant from these
borders was as rare as a man from Borneo.

Into the vacuum rushed the American negro.

It does not seem wholly true that, as common talk had had
it, the big industries lured the colored man Northward. They
did not need to. That swarm in the Southern States had long
been awaiting a chance to move. For over fifty years the negro
had been free, but in the same period he had been treated as a
separate sort of human being, and often as a lower sort — and
sometimes as a sort lower than a tame animal. He was sick of
it. He was particularly sick of suspicion and cruelty, of Jim
Crow cars, of "the buzzard roost*' in the theaters, of disfran-
chisement, of judges who gave white men the verdicts. It was
not that he was starving, at least in large numbers. It was
388

"that inferior feeling.5' And so the negro, even when singing
under the Southern moon, was eager to give up his vine-hung
(and probably unsanitary) cottage in the fields for whatever
he could get in a white man's town.

Chicago, lined up with the Mississippi States and a terminus
for the big North-South Railroads, was the natural goal for
as many of that huge negro population in the central South as
could find the carfare. It shone like a great North Star to those
dreamers. Many thousands of the race had settled there before
the World War, anyhow ; the World's Fair had attracted many.
Their Chicago newspapers, in addition to messages by letter
and otherwise, carried down to the black folk below the Ohio
appeals like this, from the De-fender: "I beg of you, my breth-
ren, to leave that benighted land. You are free men. . . . Your
neck has been in the yoke. ... To die from the bite of frost
is far more glorious than that of the mob."

More sober, and more grammatical, appeals described the
high wages to be had. As much as $8 a day. It was given out
that there were 50,000 jobs open in the stockyards alone. Chi-
cago, Chicago was the place ! The Southern negro felt that he
knew the city ; knew it, if in no other way, through Sears Roe-
buck and Montgomery Ward catalogues.

Ah, yes ! And, if not too benighted, he knew a great name
that was linked not only with Sears Roebuck but with his own
welfare — the name of Julius Rosenwald. The Jewish philan-
thropist, long before the war, had come to realize that the ad-
vancement of the negro had claims upon his tender sympathies
as sharp as those of needy, retarded people anywhere. He had
visited Tuskegee, had held long talks with Booker T. Wash-
ington. He had winced over tragedies of race in Chicago, for so
long his own city. And, figuring it all out with the wisdom
that had built a colossal business, he poured out his help
through a system aimed at good management of what he gave
and at the basic needs of the colored man, namely, education
and better morals.

Thus, with heavy benefactions to negro schools and with his

389

cooperative offers that led to negro Y. M. C. A. buildings in
more than a dozen cities — Chicago included— he had by war-
time come to be known as one of the two or three greatest
American friends of the black race. Never did he cease to help
universities or Jewish charities or relief funds of general
scope; he gave them millions. But he had a special warm spot
for the negroes : he called them, in one prepared statement, the
neighbors of the white man.

Within a few years more it was to be known that he had a
special project for relieving the problem of housing black
families; and before he was seventy this model-apartment
scheme on Chicago's South Side was to reach the point of
actual building.

The great migration, one of the most notable movements of a
people ever recorded, began in 1916, with the increasing suc-
tion of men into foreign armies. It reached its peak when the
United States mobilized. During 1916-1918 about half a mil-
lion negroes journeyed from Southern to Northern States, in-
tending to stay. Chicago, which had received tens of thousands
since the Civil War, and had seldom bothered about the black
streak in its human fabric, became the destination of about
65,000 negroes, and realized full soon that it had a race-
problem.

Of course, it seemed as though there had always been the
Black Belt, down there in the region where refined folk hated to
go; down there alongside the red-light district. There had also
been black patches on the West and North Sides. Few of the
average thoughtless Chicagoans had ever supposed there
would not be room for more in those unsightly areas. But now,
with hordes of black men coining in, and with whole families dis-
embarking, bundles, babies, and all, from trains, with black
laborers crowding the street-cars, and with an obvious bursting
of housing barriers, the situation was as clear as though some
mighty flood had swollen a murky river above its banks.
390

"Shortly after the migrants began to arrive," says that
amazing report. The Negro in Chicago* "practically all avail-
able houses had been taken and filled to overcrowding. On a
single day the Chicago Urban League found 664* negro appli-
cants for houses, with only fifty-five dwellings actually avail-
able. At the same time, rents for negroes were increased by
from 5 to 50 per cent.5*

The newcomers captured what they could out of the fourth-
rate or fifth-rate dwellings unoccupied by the very poor. Many
were glad to lay down their tired heads in rooms whose squalor
was equaled only by their vicious history — for it was in the
once gaudy, now foul, houses that had paid fortunes to Levee-
kings that thousands of negroes found homes. They saw with
round eyes fragments of Gomorrah. They came upon mysteri-
ous tunnels, odd electric devices. They opened closets whose
doors stuck, and found the rags of brilliant costumes. They
came upon a skeleton, here and there, . . .

When investigators went to see how the migrants were faring,
they got curt reports, like: "No gas, bath, or toilet . . .
plumbing bad ; leaks . . , hot-water heater out of order . . .
water for drinking and cooking has to be carried in ...
asked landlord to turn on water in kitchen ; told them to move.55

Some landlords were not even as good as that. They made
promises, broke them, and cursed the poor devils who got in-
sistent. There was a continued shifting of negro families from
one hovel to another, or from one large but squalid apartment
to another, a childlike optimism ever leading on.

And often they did find better things. And as time passed,
members of the race who were determined, who were buffeted
but resilient, pleasure-loving but hardworking, acquired prop-
erty, found better homes, swelled the membership in churches
to an amazing degree, and, however tough the struggle, re-
joiced that they could ride in any seat vacant in a street-car,
or sit on the main floor of a theater.

i The Negro in Chicago; a Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot, by the
Chicago Commission on Race Relations. The University of Chicago Press. 1922.

391

They spread into boulevards of the South Side. They crept
south along the old and charming double avenue. Grand
Boulevard, and along South Park Avenue, and into aristo-
cratic old Prairie Avenue, and the white man moved on ahead
— often hurling a bomb as he went.

The black race dug its foothold deep. It acquired a fancy
for real estate, and did not at all mind a burden of mortgages.
Carl Sandburg, the poet, investigated the situation in 1919,
and wrote : "Twenty years ago fewer than fifty families of the
colored race were home-owners in Chicago. Today they num-
ber thousands, their purchases ranging from $200 to $20,000,
from tar-paper shacks in the still-district to brownstone and
greystone establishments."

While the black man thus progressed, while in a few months
a virtual savage from the cotton-fields would don the clothes
and something of the manner of an urban dweller, while the op-
pressed creatures could learn to play and to save their dimes,
it could not be said that the negro in Chicago found himself al-
ways proud to live. "Change of residence," says the commis-
sion's report, "carried with it in many cases change of status.
The 'leader' in a- small Southern community when he came to
Chicago was immediately absorbed into the great, struggling
mass of unnoticed workers. School-teachers . . . had to go to
work in factories."

He, the negro, half -child, half -man, was still the under dog.
He was still a "separate" being. Though he was happier than
he had been, there was a disturbance within him, deep down.
He threw out his chest and jingled his silver, to keep up his
spirits. He was delighted when white people treated him nicely.

Only one big politician seemed unreservedly his friend, and
that was the great Mayor Thompson. As far back as the pri-
mary of 1915, Thompson had attracted a notable negro vote.
With the assistance of colored aldermen, he carefully devel-

oped it, not only showing himself in the Black Belt whenever
he could, but appointing colored men and women to places in
the City Hall. By the time of the mayoralty election of 1919,
this deliberate cultivation of a struggling, half -segregated, and
intensely emotional race had resulted in the capture by Thomp-
son of almost every negro's heart. Little they cared how the
enemies of their friend protested about Thompson's machine,
about the collapsed finances of the city — slumped from a sur-
plus of about $2,800,000 in 1915 to a deficit of over $4,600,000
in 1919 — or about the increase in murderous crime, or about
quarrels over subways, or about "Thompson's disloyalty."

He would appear at campaign meetings down in the dark
South Side, and be greeted as "our brother." His big face,
rounder and swarthier than a few years back, would beam ac-
ceptance of the term.

"I will protect the weak against the strong," he would
thunder.

And were not they the weak? He himself was a strong figure
to them, big and broad. A distinct person, a gladiator. For
the rest, as James O'Donnell Bennett described him in those
days : "Eyes heavy and somewhat sad ; nose too small, but beau-
tifully modeled; mouth lax and heavy and not reassuring ex-
cept when he smiles, and then the smile irradiates the whole
face . . . complexion still florid as in the old days ; eyebrows
heavy and give the face strength ; on the whole, a massive head,
poised on a powerful neck."

His voice would go out in a roar over rows of crinkly-haired
heads, shouting down the men and things these under dogs
hated — the "trust newspapers," or rather the millionaires who
owned them, the smug or academic social students who talked
about "clean politics," the upper crust of society generally.

He shook the hands of those black folk. He admired their
babies. On at least one occasion he took up a pickaninny on the
platform and held it on his broad shoulder.

He was running against two vote-getting opponents : Sweit-
zer, whom he had beaten before, and Maclay Hoyne, the busy,

393

ambitious State's attorney, who chose to run as an independent.
John Fitzpatrick was also running on a labor-party ticket.
Thompson had the advantage of the divided opposition. At
the same time, he fought weighted down by the odium of pay-
roll padding, his truckling to Lundin, and the forlorn, crime-
ridden conditions of the city. His promise of a traction settle-
ment was a matter of course. All candidates promised one. As
for his war record, as for his soarings into irrelevant national
issues and his hollow appeals to free Ireland, they may have
helped as much as hurt him. The soldier voters were still in
France.

Anyway, after the three-cornered campaign had run its
course of political maneuvering, mud-slinging, Loop parades,
and saloon-fights, it became clear that Thompson was still on
top. Behind the brave claims of his rivals lurked the probability
of defeat. He was not to be the "landslide" hero of 1915 ; that
was clear also. In fact, the issue might narrow down to a few
thousand votes.

And that was what it did. It narrowed down to a margin,
throughout the city, that might by itself have called for a re-
count. But the negro men and women marched to the polls,
solid for Thompson. In some precincts not a vote was cast for
another candidate. Thompson got 15,569 votes in the princi-
pal black wards, as against 3,323 for the next man. His offi-
cial plurality was Sl,622. Evidently, then, even if beaten by
some thousands without it, his negro support would have
elected him. The phenomenon was startling almost beyond ex-
pression.

Not quite four months later, the condensed venom of politi-
cal hate and race-hates gave Chicago five of the worst days it
had ever known.

The black cloud rising for several years past had been met
with no civic movement merited by such a problem* Good negro
leaders had worked to benefit and civilize the newcomers from
394

the South ; white philanthropists like Rosenwald had done what
they could, while the City Hall worked to corrupt the black
men politically and morally. But it was after and not before
the outbreak of July, 1919, that organized and scientific study
got to work — and then it was ordered by the governor of the
State and not by the Mayor or City Council of Chicago.

The menace hovered and grew. The negroes obtained more
and more jobs; their swollen population crept out of regions
where they were tolerated into locales where they "did not be-
long." The situation passed from one of grumbling and jos-
tling into one of sporadic terrorism. That cowardly weapon,
the secretly planted bomb, was employed by well-dressed
fiends who sought to scare negroes out of newly acquired
homes or to "warn55 real-estate men who helped the negroes get
them. Within the two years from July 1917 to July 1919,
twenty-four bombings were recorded. Not one was traced to its
source.

Along with all this went a guerrilla warfare carried on by
gangs of young hoodlums to whom the pursuit of a negro
down an alley was a joyous adventure as well as a "duty."
Along a strip of several miles, north to south, adjoining the
Black Belt and with a deadline between, these gangs, some of
them dominated by youngsters under military and voting age,
had their hunting-grounds. It needed only a tocsin to unite
them. The reelection of Thompson, after a display of every
evil prejudice, racial, nationalistic, or religious, seemed to fur-
nish such a signal.

On Sunday, July 27, there was trouble at a South Side
bathing-beach, used by both whites and blacks, with an invis-
ible line between. Somebody crossed the line, and stone-throw-
ing began. A seventeen-year-old colored boy swam into the
area used by whites, and while a shower of stones was flying, he
took fright, sank, and was drowned. A white man was pointed
out by negroes to the policeman on guard, but was not ar-
rested. Instead, the officer arrested a negro on the complaint
of white bystanders.

395

Two hours passed, while more and more negroes collected
at the beach. The lone officer sent for reinforcements. On their
arrival, a negro fired at them and was himself shot down. Then,
as the day wore on and darkness came, messages sped from
place to place in the negro quarter that the great terror had
become a fact. Groups of whites and blacks met; there were
disorganized fights, stabbings, shootings.

The next day, a working-day, was quiet until the afternoon
hour when laborers jammed the street-cars returning from
work. Cars were brought to a halt, negroes jerked from the
platforms and beaten. Thirty blacks were maimed, and four
killed, while one white man was murdered.

The outbreak spread out into tragic incidents all up and
down the embattled part of the South Side, This was one, as
described in the commission's report three years later:

"Rumor had it that a white occupant of the Angelus apart-
ment house had shot a negro boy from a fourth-story window.
Negroes besieged the building. The white tenants sought po-
lice protection, and about a hundred policemen, including some
mounted men, responded. The mob of about fifteen hundred
negroes demanded the 'culprit/ but the police failed^to find him
... a flying brick hit a policeman. There was a quick massing
of the police, and a volley was fired into the negro mob. Four
negroes were killed and many were injured."

At midnight that same night, Monday, Chicago's nightmare
was intensified by a car-strike, tying up all the surface and
elevated lines. The mobs, on both sides, now attacked men
walking to work. Automobiles filled with armed hoodlums sped
through the hot, dusty streets of the belt, firing at will.

Nothing less than panic had seized Chicago. The smoke of
burning negro homes was rising. Mobs pursued their victims
even into downtown streets, where some white men wearing the
uniforms of soldiers and sailors killed two negroes and wounded
others. The police seemed powerless; indeed, there was some
evidence that they were friendly to such gangs as Ragen's Colts,
the Lorraine Club, and the Sparkler's Club — all "mentioned,"
396

but none convicted, in connection with murderous assaults. So
there came, within twenty-four hours after the trouble began,
appeals to the city authorities to ask for militia. Chief of Po-
lice Garrity, Spanish War veteran, held back, declaring that
inexperienced riflemen — the "crack men" were still in Prance —
would only make matters worse. "Mayor Thompson," says the
Commission's report, "supported the Chief's refusal until out-
side pressure compelled him to ask the Governor for aid." Gov-
ernor Lowden, watching the situation from a hotel room, acted,
but so much time had been lost that the troops did not begin
active duty until the evening of Wednesday. With the arrival
of these five thousand men, striplings though many of them
were, the riot began to die down. A rain-storm followed the in-
tense July heat that had helped madden the crowds. "From this
time on," says the report, "the violence was sporadic, scattered,
and meager."

It was while revolvers were still cracking that citizens met at
the Union League Club and petitioned Governor Lowden to
appoint a State Commission to study "the psychological, so-
cial, and economic causes." On August 20 he named twelve
persons, six from each race. Julius Rosenwald, the philanthro-
pist, and Victor F. Lawson, the editor, were among those repre-
senting the whites. Funds were raised through an auxiliary
committee. A long and intensive inquiry began.

The great book, of nearly seven hundred pages, was at
length issued. Of its magnanimous and enlightened appeals,
aimed at quieting race-prejudice, Chicago absorbed all too
little.

"What are we going to do about it?" one man would ask an-
other, as the years went on. And people shook their heads.

397

CHAPTER XX

HE service-men who came back that Summer were excited
about "old Chi."

They had heard of the reelection of Thompson; some of them
had made long-distance protests. They had read about the
race-riots, the street-car strike, the new seven-cent fare, the up-
roar about "H. C. L.," and the (temporary) collapse of the
saloon. It must have seemed to many of them, while still abroad,
that their city, despite its immense Liberty Loan successes and
its Red Cross generosity, was almost as insane as the battle-
front,

But they found it going about its business with the same
nonchalant and cheery and chip~on~shoulder spirit that it al-
ways showed.

Moreover, they found it increasing in beauty.

"Beautiful," was not their adjective, nor "wonderful," nor
"attractive." They said:

"Look, fella, there's a new skyscraper at La Salle and
Adams."

"The Field Museum is sure stickin* up out of the mud."
398

"Why, they've cut off the old buildings already to build the
boulevard !"

Their city was changing, as noticeably as the lines of auto-
mobile-bodies— which also they noticed — as vividly as the mov-
ies were changing. Although these boys may not have under-
stood it, quite, the immense conceptions of a new city, born ten
or twenty years before, were now forcing their way upward
through architectural debris; they were penetrating crowded
and smutty areas like a fine plow that turns its furrows among
rotten roots. A triumph over stupidity, indifference, bicker-
ings, and greed was being expressed in long, broad sweeps of
highway, as well as in victorious towers and cornices.

The last time the service-men saw the improved West
Twelfth Street, for example, it had been, for much of its
length, a chaos of dust and stripped buildings, their ends torn
off like the shelled towns of France. Before that, even long be-
fore there ever was a parade of Chicago doughboys, Europe-
bound, there had been dragging through the courts the formal
objections to the condemnation proceedings. About the time
when Wilson was nominated for a second term, the court opened
the way for tearing down buildings and widening the street ; in
August of that year, the city paid for the first piece of prop-
erty condemned, and the wrecking began. Then, in December,
1917, while some of the troops had gone over, but many more
were in camp, the job of widening the street from 66 feet to
108, for a mile and a half west of the river, was complete, and
a little before Christmas there was a carnival in celebration.
Nearly 100,000 people rode in decorated cars, or cheered from
the curbings.

To accomplish this end, there had to be worked out a com-
promise with stubborn railroads about the viaduct which was
to carry the improved street eastward over the river. Then the
city had to buy 302 individual pieces of property ; it had to
deal with sharp lawyers representing property-owners who at
first fought bitterly, and some groups of whom were harangued
by agitators*

399

But, "as a lasting tribute to Chicago's citizens of foreign
origin," wrote Walter D. Moody,1 "it must be recorded that
these people, when they were properly informed, . . . under-
took to cooperate with the [Plan] Commission, and did so with
such complete harmony and faith as to put some of the more
Americanized sections to blush."

When the condemnation suit came to trial, the city, accord-
ing to Mr. Moody, met with scarcely any opposition.

In carrying through the boulevard-link improvement, the
commission and the city encountered one of the Americanized
sections, and faced a tartar.

The construction-problem w$s not as simple as the one of
lopping off the fronts of some West Twelfth Street stores.
Meanwhile, the importance of dealing adequately with Michi-
gan Avenue, part of the city's "front yard," was in many ways
greater. The boulevard had been widened already, from Park
Row north to Randolph Street, creating what used to be called
"the splendid mile." But this splendor was abruptly checked
by arriving at a length of street, from Randolph to the river-
bank, historic but hideous, and only 66 feet wide.

Mr. Moody vividly describes that strip as one which "pre-
sented the appearance of a poor, tenth-rate city . . . Many
vacant buildings showed the grime of years upon their windows,
their door-lintels were hung with cobwebs, and a general air of
decadence prevailed. At the corner of Randolph Street . , .
traffic was barricaded by the 66-foot jutting ^building-line
which caused the vehicles struggling to enter the gap to be
massed in solid and almost inextricable confusion. At the river,
traffic was obliged to make a sharp turn up a steep grade to
cross the Rush Street Bridge, and thence it continued in that
narrow, overcrowded thoroughfare for blocks before it could
again turn lakeward into Pine Street."
i What of the City? by Walter D, Moody. A. C. McClurg and Company, 1919.

400

This account added that the Rush Street Bridge at that
time — before its two-level successor was used — carried 16 per
cent, more traffic than London Bridge. Across it rumbled 77
per cent, of all the automobiles, and 23 per cent, of all the com-
mercial vehicles, which entered the Loop district from the
North Side.

It was in the Spring of 1914, in the last year of Harrison
as mayor, that the City Council authorized the improvement.
In November the first bond issue of $3,800,000, went over by
a popular vote. The majority was 78,846; a victory gained
over growlers who objected to a move to help "the rich auto-
mobile crowd," who called the proposed street "the swells' "
thoroughfare, and the "boulevard on stilts." At least as un-
selfish a stand might have been expected from "the swells" as
had been taken by their less prosperous fellow-citizens of West
Twelfth Street. But not so ! The suit to gain possession of the
land needed went into court in February, 1916, and was not
finished until more than two years later.

"The trial of this case," Mr. Moody wrote, "was contested
by two hundred and five lawyers who, in their efforts to obtain
good deals for their clients, added tremendously to the cost of
the litigation, the city being obliged to employ a large array
of high-priced experts to defend itself against its opponents.1
Many instances of unselfishness and fine public spirit were
shown by citizens whose property was either taken or heavily
taxed, but many other instances of selfishness of the first order
showed themselves, which resulted in the cost of the improve-
ment being materially enhanced."

A direct settlement had to be made with 8,700 property
owners. Many "got ugly" because they had cherished a fear
that the entire cost would be up to them; some, no doubt, were
angered because the "low-brows" elsewhere in the city had
urged that very arrangement. Others simply clung to what was
undoubtedly gilt-edged real estate. One big company carried to

i Coming events cast shadows. See Chapter XXVIII for an account of what
the undue employment of "experts" did to the Thompson administration.

401

the State Supreme Court a claim for $1,000,000, but got only
half of it. The commission, with strong assistance from a body
now named the North Central Association, had managed to
sign up, before public hearing, a majority of the lineal front-
footage ; and thus a year's delay was saved.

The tearing-down process began near the river on April 13,
1918. There was an automobile parade and a dinner eaten by
about a thousand people. Mayor Thompson spoke; so did his
"demon of energy" (the president of the board of local im-
provements) Michael J. Faherty; so did Mr. Wacker, With
characteristic warmth of phrase, Mr. Wacker said:

"The administrations of Mayors Fred A. Busse, Carter H.
Harrison and William Hale Thompson will illumine ... the
brightest of all pages in the history of our beloved city."

The great improvement crashed on. It swallowed tons of
money— bond issue after issue. The war boosted prices; the
treasury emptied itself and was refilled, with Faherty's usual
wild prodigality. By the spring of 1920 the cost had grown
to nearly $16,000,000. Bond issues were no longer feasible.
There was a deficit of more than $1,000,000. Experts (many
of them mere minor politicians) grabbed nearly $800,000. It
was Faherty's motto, then as well as afterward, to "Go ahead
on the jump and straighten out the legal end later."

None of this darkened the festivities on the fourteenth of
May, 1920, when the "splendid mile" had been pushed north-
ward over the river, and far beyond, and was ready to be en-
joyed. The mighty two-level bridge, which rose into the air like
an alligator's jaws when ships whistled, and over which, at
later times, millions of autos were to run while heavier vehicles
clattered in the half -darkness below, was open for traffic.

Another flowered procession of motors . . . Big Bill, his
cowboy hat, and his Booster's Club . . . signs hoisted, read-
ing "All hats off to our Mayor. What do we live for?" . . .
shouting people on the curb . . . flags waving, whistles blow-
ing . . . airplanes showering down booster circulars. . . .
402

The next day, two thousand cars per hour hissing over the
smooth, wide structure. . . .
Another milestone!

It was like Chicago, the Jekyll and Hyde of cities, the city
of dual personality and gaudy contrasts, that on the same day
when a beautiful civic adventure was celebrated there should
take place a ceremony marking the end of a vice-lord.

On that May 14 there passed along South Side streets, with
throngs following, and judges and aldermen in swell cars, the
flower-covered coffin of Big Jim Colosimo, unctuous monarch
of the Levee for years. Under his bland exterior, his "front"
of cafe proprietor and host to politicians and college boys alike,
he had the temper of a huge spider who waits and waits. He
hid behind his "front" and sent out Torrio to do his ugly
errands. He poured wine from dusty bottles — and in the back
room counted his Midas-like pile.

Some one shot him dead in his "refined" cafe one afternoon.
Dale Winter, singer protege of his, mourned him, along with
the widow. And though both police and friends swore to "get"
the assassin, he never was found. No one ever knew — unless it
was Torrio.

Where the lake lay glittering, there was no suggestion of
the city's volcanic heart. The march toward improvement went
steadily on, through a labyrinth of plans, counter-plans, legal-
isms, politics.

A tangled business, indeed, this lake-front development ! It
can scarcely be more than suggested in a few paragraphs. One
is confronted by a tremendous library of records, in which lie
moldering the details of negotiations between such ponderous
units as the City Council, the Park Board, the United States
War Department, and the Illinois Central Railroad. Besides,

403

there were individual property-owners with riparian rights.
All had something to say. The original authority of the gov-
ernment, the grants to the railroad, legislation that heaped
up through the years, created a web almost baffling the clear-
est minds.

The story of the effort to compromise the Illinois Central
case is typical. Told at its briefest, it runs like this :

The agreement was prefaced by four years (1903-1907) of
legislative action, necessary that the city might acquire those
riparian rights held by citizens. Next came negotiation with
the railroad, which had an undisputed claim to the lake shore
bordering the heart of the city for about four miles. The argu-
ment dragged on until the winter of 1911-1912. Terms were
reached, but rejected by the aldermen. Then came forward a
citizen group including Lessing Rosenthal, Allen B. Pond, and
Charles E. Merriam, who suggested better terms with the rail-
road; that is, better for Chicago. They proposed a much-re-
duced grant to the Illinois Central in return for the coveted
strip of water as well as ten-odd acres of land. In the mean-
time, the South Park commissioners, two of whom were John
Barton Payne and Charles L. Hutchinson, reached a special
settlement with the Illinois Central It assured the site near
downtown for the Field Museum, instead of in Jackson Park,
where it seemed for a time the merchant's gift might have to
go. The site was provided only a few months before the limit
in Mr. Field's will for acceptance of his $8,000,000 bequest.

As for the complete project of shore-development, it came
to the verge of success, and then a new "hitch" developed.

The War Department, keeping a watchful eye on the lake-
front that Chicago was trying to make its own, had to be ap-
pealed to for a permit before the filling proposed could be
done. Mayor Harrison led a large and determined delegation
to Washington. Mr. Secretary, backed by an array of en-
gineers, said he could issue no permit until the entire question
of Chicago harbors was resolved. Back came the delegation,
and the Plan Commission, which had to veer with each wind,

started to adjust its blueprints to meet the new circumstances.
At length the plans were ready, and in the fall of 1914 the
Council Committee on Harbors, Wharves and Bridges called
for a recommendation covering everything. It was forthcom-
ing. Nearly two years passed in hearings and in argument. An
ordinance was adopted. The Illinois Central rejected it. Dead-
lock . . . Next the railroad was requested to, and did, sub-
mit a complete terminal scheme. It came before the City Coun-
cil in September, 1916, but now a subject of debate not yet
thrashed out — though raised tentatively years before — entered
the long-drawn conferences: the question of electrifying the
railroad system. Stalemate once more.

The Great War was on, but despite its distractions, all par-
ties to the lake-front problem, strongly urged by such bodies
as the Association of Commerce and the Union League Club,
gathered themselves anew, and in 1918 negotiations were re-
sumed. By July, 1919, the Council Committee on Railway
Terminals had recommended an ordinance providing for elec-
trification of the Illinois Central, a grand new terminal station
in harmony with the Field Museum, and other important fea-
tures. The railroad finally accepted the measure and filed bond
for $1,000,000, agreeing to electrify its suburban lines by
1927, its freight-service by 1932, and its through passenger-
lines by 1937.

Thus, during a period which saw world-convulsions as well
as stormy political years in Chicago, the will and ingenuity of
citizens who held fast to the lake-front dream forced a path
through meshes of trouble as dense, if not as wounding, as the
barbed wire in No Man's Land. The Field Museum and the
Stadium were built, and these two classic structures became
dazzling ornaments of "Chicago's front yard." Farther north,
meantime, beyond a curve of blue water, there had been thrust
out into the lake the Municipal Pier, whose twin towers and
double chain of lights contribute so much to Chicago's night-
scene.

By the lake-front negotiation, the way was opened also for

405

the creation of a shore Elysium, comprehending the island
necklace, the splendid curving boulevard on the lip of the lake,
the vast undulating expanse of park along the city's central
area — all those beauties conceived so long ago, and now flower-
ing in a way that thrills not only every Chicagoan, but every
visitor. The nuisance of hundreds of puffing locomotives, belch-
ing smoke that discouraged tree-planting, was on the way to its
end. But, as the candid Moody wrote :

"Reviewing the years of wrangling, bickering, and delay,
one is forced to the conclusion that two-thirds of these nine
years [1910-1919] have been wasted, and that two-thirds of
the controversy has been stupid."

If this criticism was true of negotiations, what could be said
of the troubles that grew out of labor strife?

The city was eager, it was passionately determined, to build,
build, build. Some great urge, not wholly commercial, yet cer-
tainly not wholly idealistic, forced it on. This passion brought
about, after years of struggle, the erection of the Union Sta-
tion; and thanks to Mr. Wacker, John F. Wallace, and others,
the huge terminal group conformed to the Chicago Plan bet-
ter than for a time it seemed likely to do. Yet this great project
was halted at least twice by long and bitter labor-contests.

There was tumult all through the building-industry. There
were here, as in most other fields, effects of the effort of a
topsy-turvy world to get back on its axis. Material prices were
sky-high ; so were living costs ; wages, however, in the building-
trades had not kept pace with this rise. In the whirl of new
angers — and with many people so ready to raise the cry "Bol-
sheviks I" — the ideal of arbitration, which seemed so well estab-
lished back in the 1900s, was frequently lost to sight in the
building-field.

There were a good many union officials, czars of certain
building-trades, who had a passion to get rich quick. There
406

was a culmination of devices such as exclusive agreements be-
tween material-firms and union rings, or "shake-downs" which
scared contractors badly if they did not impoverish them. The
"pineapple" and the sawed-off shotgun had come into use,
superseding the brass knuckles of 1900. Sluggers more clever
and blood-thirsty than Skinny Madden ever controlled could
now be hired for $50 a day and up — or down.

There was one attempt to deal with this in 1917, when a
noted Chicago laborite, Mike Boyle ("Umbrella Mike") was
convicted, with others, of conspiracy to restrain trade. But
this case, only one of a series of efforts to "clean up" or to
"crush the unions" — as you happened to look at it — failed to
clear the air. Looking at it from the viewpoint of such organi-
zations as the Chicago Association of Commerce, the woods
were full of union officials with criminal records, holding power
through thuggery. The vexatious "jurisdictional strike" was
snagging many an architect's plans. And money was leaking
from the pockets of some contractors into those of some busi-
ness agents. A legislative commission headed by Senator John
Dailey sat on the matter during 1920, and heard dark and
bldody tales, accompanied usually by an echo of the jingle of
dirty money. Sums ranging from $3,500 to $47,000, it was al-
leged, were "coughed up" to assure the completion of big
buildings. There were seven strikes on the Drake Hotel job!

Now there was a man on the Federal bench in Chicago to
whom, at that time, people were apt to turn when they wanted
something settled or exposed, fortissimo. He was a black-eyed
judge, with a shock of white hair, a quid of tobacco in his
cheek, and a spitfire vocabulary. Father Landis, back in Indi-
ana, had named his son Kenesaw Mountain, after the battle
fought near Marietta, Georgia, in 1864. The Judge, who in the
1900s won national attention by imposing a huge fine on the
Standard Oil Company of Indiana, and who scored almost
every week by quaint remarks while hearing minor cases, was
always ready to take up troublous questions.

In 1921 the embattled builders and the trades unions laid

407

their troubles in his lap. There had been a lockout that ex-
hausted everybody's patience, and held back enterprises worth
hundreds of millions. Judge Landis agreed to arbitrate the
wage-scale, and then elected to take up other issues, too. When
he was ready to rule, he not only revised wages — ordering what
amounted, roughly, to a 12% Pe? cent- reduction per hour,
and more — but he went into the whole basic trouble. He de-
clared from the bench that Chicago building was in bad repute.
Capital, he said, was avoiding the city as though it were dis-
eased. "There is a virtual famine in housing-accommodations,"
he said, though it was only a few years since Chicago had had
about 30,000 vacant flats.

The agreement Judge Landis proposed called not only for
arbitration, but for an end of sympathetic strikes, a removal of
limitation on material to be used, and an abandonment of union
rules that tied contractors5 hands.

This was the Judge's own "pineapple," tossed among the
building-unions. The labor history of succeeding years was
made turbulent by it. Some unions, such as the plumbers, re-
volted. The carpenters, who had proposed arbitration in the
first place, concluded that the Landis survey would go beyond
wages into matters over which the local union had no jurisdic-
tion, and remained aloof. When the row broke, they took up
litigation which, late in 1928, was decided by the Illinois Su-
preme Court in their favor.

As for the associated contractors, cheered up by Judge Lan-
dis' decision their way, they entered upon a distinctly new pro-
gram. They decided to employ such unions as accepted the
award, and to fight the others with imported men and troops of
special guards. In an effort to back them up, the Association of
Commerce appointed a citizens5 committee, with a roster, at
that time, of 179. Thomas E. Donnelley, son of the pioneer
printer, became its head, and men of large wealth such as
James A. Patten backed him up. The committee obtained
$3,000,000 by public subscription.

It was another Chicagoesque conflict, with battle-cries such

408

as "Down with the boycotting millionaires !" on one side, and
"No quarter to grafting labor!" on the other. There were de-
sertions from both armies. Some of the unions got on the best
they could under the new conditions ; others tried to fight. A
number of contractors, with nation-wide obligations, fearing
strikes in other cities, finally abandoned their alliance with the
Citizens' Committee to Enforce the Landis Award (its full
title). But that body became powerful, set up employment
agencies; insured building-operations; backed up the police
with special guards (as many as seven hundred at one time) ;
employed publicity-methods with decided effect. Meantime, the
venerable Building Trades Council went through "shake-up"
after "shake-up."

And during those years, of course — this being Chicago — the
struggle did not stop short of bombs, arson, or murder. The
chief of the flat- janitors' union and nine others were convicted
of conspiracy to bomb and extort. A police lieutenant named
Terence Lyons was mysteriously slain by gunmen riding in a
Ford car. Chief of Police Fitzmorris caused the Building
Trades Council suite to be raided; scores of labor men were
whirled to cells in patrol-wagons; three characters of great
notoriety then — Fred (Frenchy) Mader, Big Tim Murphy,
and Con Shea — were tried, but eventually acquitted* Mader
"took a rap" over a matter of $700 and some Drake Hotel
lamps. . . . But that, too, was crossed off, as the months went
on.

People twenty years hence will wonder what it was all about.

Somehow or other, the city rose above its battles, its violent
clashes in court and out, its gushes of hatred and its peril from
human destroyers.

The blue sky itself scarcely seemed a barrier to spires and
Babylonian towers. The Masonic Temple, miracle of the 1890s,
was humbled, the Monadnock no longer attracted rural sight-

409

seers. These sightseers looked down from galleries hundreds of
feet up — looked down over the far-spreading, wistful? and
lovely lake on one side, and into the Liliputian movement on
boulevards (new and glossy boulevards) to landward.

Figures, if you like:

The building-record, over $100,000,000 a year in 1914-
1916, fell to about $64,000,000 in 1916, and to less than $35,-
000,000 in 1918. It recovered to $104,198,850 in 1919. But
what of that? During the first year buildings erected under
the Landis Award were alone valued at $115,000,000. And
during the next six years, general conditions being what they
were, there were to be added to the mighty roofs and walls of
the new Chicago edifices that cost more than $1,700,000,000.
In one year, 1924, more than ninety miles of buildings front-
age went up. Meantime, pressure from people with city-plan-
ning minds brought new zoning ordinances and a commission
which tackled the huge job of remapping a metropolis.

The age of mere millions had passed. The age of billions had
dawned. There had vanished also all timorousness in the face
of hugeness, all fear of building too much*

And with the ending of such fears, it seemed that the city
had lost, as well, its suspicion that beauty did not pay.

410

CHAPTER XXI

now the days of super-speed, of super-brilliance, of
super-power. American energy not only had survived the war,
but apparently had been redoubled by it. Chicago caught the
pace — the amazing, dazzling, even perilous pace of the third
decade.

Now came the time of six-cylinder cars, owned by people for
whom four cylinders had been a luxury. To eight and twelve
cylinders new thousands aspired. Bright motor-headlights
made firefly processions on every glassy street.

It was the time of stunning tiers of window-lights, sur-
mounted sometimes by illumined castles in air, magic Par-
thenons floating among the clouds.

— The time of lofty hotels and "ultra" apartment houses,
with tiaras of lights, elevators "you worked yourself" ; electric
devices that would have humbled Aladdin.

— Of more and more ambitious movie palaces, their fronts
streaming with flashing arches or traveling placards ; their in-
terior an awesome mixture of all the architectures ; their stages
set with spectacles enriched by new inventions of electricians ;
their orchestras playing amid color shading from sunrise golden
to sunset purple and back again.

— Of equally grand, bizarre, or at least big, dance-halls;

411

crowds larger than at State conventions ; gleaming and sonor-
ous saxophones — the Charleston.

Of shop-windows as amazing as the World's Fair; of

"specialties"; of antiques; of lightning changes in styles and
merchandise-gambles lost; of gewgaws and gimcracks and ban-
gles and bracelets; of billions of stockings and billions of little
hats ; all in floods of light, managed with great art.

— Of incredibly long lanes of street-lamps, up and down the
slopes; light everywhere; light lavished and wasted; as much
candle-power used in a week as the whole nation once used in a

year.

And the element in which all this lived came from super-
power.

Aladdin was reincarnated, for Chicago, in Samuel Insull.
That citizen now dominates a power-realm so wide-spread and
various that little people doubtless think of him as a vague
Influence, above and beyond the turning wheels and crackling
wires ; a being who has got everything under his thumb, who
sits and presses buttons, who owns too much. What did he
ever do, men ask?

The name of Insull did not excite common talk in Chicago
until something like twenty years ago. This England-bo.rn
American had, however, arrived in Chicago in 1892. Before
that date, he had observed the central West. He saw its sweep-
ing areas, its beauties, its unused resources, its future wealth.
It was the arena in which he wanted to perform; and Chicago
was, perforce, its heart. To use Mr. Insull's own — and more
practical — words,1 "It seemed to me that this great community
. . . must inevitably become the center of manufacturing for
this populous and rich central valley of the country." He had,
in 1892, at the age of thirty-three, advanced from being a
London stenographer, the son of a manufacturer's agent and
temperance-leader, to be confidential secretary to Thomas

i Address to Western Society of Engineers, February 1, 1923.

Edison, then general business manager of the .Edison enter-
prises, and finally vice-president of the General Electric Com-
pany— a consolidation of the Edison and Thompson-Houston
interests. But he had decided to get out of the manufacturing
end into the "business of production and distribution of elec-
trical energy.9*

"I was looking for a place," to continue the quotation, "where
central-station business was the least developed. Fortunately
for me, the old Chicago Edison Company had asked me to look
for a president for that company, and I was bold enough to
suggest myself as a candidate."

The leading spirits of the company, including the banker
Byron L. Smith, did not seem to object to the suggestion. In
fact, they seized upon it. So Mr. Insull moved from under the
Edison roof and became a Chicagoan in time to make the
World's Fair a demonstration to the world of the wonders of
electric light. The central station there was the first large one
energizing at once light, power, and transportation. Mr. In-
sull was young then, but there were already at work in him
many of the same motives he has since followed. One was to
make consolidations. His company absorbed a concern called
the Chicago Arc Light Company — a mere child which, with
other infants in the badly lighted city, could generate only
about 3,500 kilowatts. He bought it from B. E. Sunny, who
was to become one of the builders of the vast telephone interests.
Later, Mr. Insull took into the fold a number of other electric
companies, formed the Commonwealth Electric Company, and
in 1907 welded all into the Commonwealth Edison Company.

Control of so much territory stimulated another of the
super-power man's motives, which led toward greater produc-
ing-energy and longer transmission. There was nothing me-
chanical at that time — the end of the century — to satisfy him.
But while he pondered, there arrived in America a device then
regarded dubiously by many engineers, a Parsons turbine. It
interested Mr. Insull very much; it started inspirations like
those which set a composer to work on a symphony,

413

President Coffin of the General Electric Company, much
interested in the western efforts of the former vice-president,
suggested that Mr. Insull try out a 1,000-kilowatt turbine.
It was not enough. Mr. Insull (after having some of his
engineers travel about the country and find out how many or
rather how few, turbines were in use), went to see Mr. Coffin.

"Build us/' said he in effect, "build us a turbine that will
produce 5,000 kilowatts."

Five thousand! Mr. Coffin's technicians shook their heads.
However, Mr. Insull said he would be responsible. He made it
personal, not a message from his directors. But, in his own
words :

"After a long discussion ... we decided to construct and
equip a turbine station.55

The first unit was of 5,000 kilowatts ; a second, at the same
place (Fisk Street) was of the same amount. The year was
1903. A few months ago a joyous group of power-men cele-
brated the placing of a tablet on that old station. Mr. Insull
tells a good story about the first experiment.

"When they turned on the steam/' he said, "my friend Mr.
Sargent [the chief consulting engineer] told me that he
thought I had better go back to the office in Adams Street. The
'innards' of the turbine were scraping on the casing and mak-
ing a terrible noise. I asked Sargent why he told me I had
better go to the office. He said: 'Well, I don't know exactly
what is going to happen/

"I said, Well, then, you had better go out as well.'

"He said, *No ; it is my duty to be here, and it is not yours.1

"I said, 'Is the thing going to blow up?'

"He replied, 'No ; I don't think it is, but I don't know.'

"I then said, 'Well, Sargent, if it blows up, the company
will blow up, and I will blow up, too; so I might as well stay
here, and between us we will finish the job.' "

Very few Chicagoans knew anything about what the turbine
meant, or even that there was a "5,000-k.w." one in town. They
414

did begin to find out that electric light was more plentiful,
brighter — and cheaper. The turbine, unknown to the crowd,
had performed an immense feat. Whereas, before Mr. Insull
brought it, transmission reached only about 2,500 feet, it be-
came comparatively without bounds. More of the amazing
engines, which had been adopted far and wide after Mr. In-
sull's experiment, were put to work ; they grew more gigantic ;
they generated up to 20,000 kilowatts, then up to 35,000, then
up to 50,000. In 1926 Mr. Insull said: "The larger companies
that supply energy directly to the Chicago district will not
hereafter install any generating-units of less than 50,000 kilo-
watts capacity, or about 67,000 horse-power each."

The tremendous Crawford Avenue station at that time had
a 75,000-kilowatt unit, and others, of 90,000 and even of
100,000, had been ordered. The region around Chicago was
being fed, electrically, by enormous stations which, in cities
north, southwest, and southeast of Chicago, drew the incredible
energy from its source and supplied the enlarged domain which
Mr. Insull in a super-power sense controlled.

He formed or consolidated companies whose work stretched
out into "metropolitan Chicago," a district including a string
of sixteen Illinois counties, two hundred towns, 6,000 square
miles. Lights, telephone-current, electricity for street-cars and
Ls — and finally for the electrified Illinois Central — all came
from Insull turbines. He said in 1926 that the whole cash in-
vestment in plants and equipment devoted to the production
or use of electricity, or in the production of electric appliances,
amounted to more than a billion dollars. By 1926, Mr. Insull
headed the Commonwealth Edison Company, with an invest-
ment of about $200,000,000. He had formed the Public Service
Company of Northern Illinois. He had for a number of years
been head of the Peoples Gas Company, controlling all gas-
production. He had become chief of the city's elevated car-
lines. Because he produced their power, he was a "man behind"
the surface lines too. He had developed interurbans into high-

415

speed and long-distance .systems. Enterprises which he man-
aged or with which he had close relations employed over
150,000 men and women.

He had "sold electricity" to Chicago and its territory to an
extent never known anywhere, and had reduced charges volun-
tarily. This was his other great motive: to convince people
that electricity was "the thing." This principle he long ago
established. And now Chicago, it is asserted, uses more elec-
tricity per capita than any other city in the world.

So much for the super-power man. Nearing three-score and
ten, he is white-haired but active. He is a target for popular,
or at least political, attack. "They say" that his interests
backed Thompson; Corporation Counsel Ettelson has been one
of Mr. InsulPs lawyers. The latter has, at least, consistently
opposed that anti-Thompsonite, Senator Deneen. He keeps on
managing his own huge machine. He reaches out in "jobs" like
his work during the war as head of the State Council of De-
fense. There are times when, it is said, he has felt that Chicago
is somewhat ungrateful.

The city, during its great recovery from "war depression,"
was sometimes too harassed, and nearly always too busy, to be
grateful. It was rising, and it was spreading. It was outstrip-
ping itself.

That "Great Central Market" swirled with effort, with in-
coming and outgoing riches. Titanic inner cities, consisting of
industrial plants employing thousands upon thousands (one
of them the development of Cyrus McCormick's dreams in the
?40s) , had grown up ; the long trains of cars on private switch-
tracks were as significant as the swarms entering and leaving
the huge gates. Chimneys belched smoke all around the half-
moon horizon.

Into the stockyards rolled interminable train-loads of ani-
mals (18,631,000 head during 1923) and millions more went
out, eastward and to Europe, killed, inspected, dressed. The

416

floods of wheat, corn, oats, barley, avalanched into Chicago
warehouses, and were passed on, amid a seesaw of Board of
Trade prices, to the tune of (1924) 69,000,000 "bushels
wheat," 99,000,000 "bushels corn," and other grains in pro-
portion. Over 255,000,000 pounds of cheese, 446,500,000
pounds of butter, nearly 7,500,000 cases of eggs, were hurled
into Chicago from the vast farm-lands round about, and con-
sumed, or packed in the half -million cubic feet of cold-storage
space, or sent on in refrigerated cars.

The city's legion of bakeries — cleansed and controlled for a
generation past — turned out $80,000,000 worth of bread and
related products. Candy was made to the tune of $49,418,800
worth. Twelve million dollars' worth of ice cream or water ices
was turned out of modernized factories. Canners stuffed twenty
million dollars' worth of goods into cans. And tobacco, cigars,
cigarettes, chewing-gum valued at nearly thirty millions, were
artificed — a part of that thirty million built the glittering
Wrigley Building at the entrance to the Link Bridge.

Armies of men and women beyond enumeration toiled at all
these activities and trades. Other armies labored in druggists5
goods, patent medicines ($14,000,000 worth in 1924),
$30,000,000 worth of soap, $13,000,000 worth of perfumery
and cosmetics. In large-scale wood-working shops, furn

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "Chicago The History Of Its Reputation"

See other formats